A love ballad

Sometimes it seems that as a culture we have love flipped on its head. Culturally, we think of love as something uncontrollable that we fall into. I don't know about you, but last time I fell into something and got it all over me, I didn't really want it there to begin with.

So we say "I can't help falling in love with you" because "you are so beautiful." You got the "best of my love" and "nothing compares to you." "Everything I do" changes because "I don't want to miss a thing."

We say "I've got a feeling," I'm "hooked on a feeling" and I "can't fight this feeling." But we are confused when we search "here, there and everywhere" for love and cannot find it. Somewhere along the line, "love will keep us together" and "never tear us apart" become "I'm all out of love."

"You're the one that I want," and we were so "happy together." But the "groovy kind of love" we started out with gradually migrates to dining "all by myself" in the "Heartbreak Hotel."

"That's the way love goes." But it doesn't have to.

God's design for love is beyond changing music, fading lyrics and fluid emotions. Love is "more than a feeling." It is an "unchained melody." The Scriptures describe love as patient and kind. "Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance." (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Lifelong, committed love can endure through all circumstances. Real love is not easy. It is the hardest thing anyone will do. Burnt dinners, arguments, adultery and cancer can all be endured when a couple individually loves the Lord first and then and only then each other.

Attempting to find intimacy with another person without achieving a sense of identity on your own becomes an attempt to complete yourself. Love is more than a song. It is real relationships built on the foundation of discovering our identity in the one who gave "amazing love."

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father, minister and writer. Read more from him at www.robhurtgen.wordpress.com.