What’s Love Got To Do With It…

It happened the other day while working, teaching actually, I had an epiphany. The curricula were not new, no, far from it. I have been wearing these words like an old familiar jacket. I still find it surprising that such a profound thought would come during the monotony of the morning… one mundane moment not unlike other moments, in which the mind takes hiatus to the spiritual realm and Wow! Where did that idea come from?

When speaking in the context of grief and loss, there is a simple, yet straightforward axiom that can be used to describe the depth attachment, thereby identifying ‘meaning’ within a relationship, which is helpful in guiding the course of intervention. I have repeated this axiom at least a bazillion times…. “If we choose to love, we will attach.” That is, to bond… to fasten or affix; join; connect; a feeling that binds one to a person, thing, cause, ideal. But the thought then came to me, how does the attachment, the binding of one person to another happen within us? The answer is easy… so easy it was surprising, What we think about, we love and what we love, we think about. You may be thinking to yourself, “That statement doesn’t sound so profound… thinking to love… loving to think”. But you see, this is the basis for all relationships, the glue that holds all together. What we love, we think about.

Remember those days, you may have been in high school or college, and you had a certain someone stuck in your head. That’s all you could think about. You couldn’t stop… thinking and thinking. You imagined the waves in his hair, the lilt of a grin, the twinkle in his eye… how light was captured and reflected off the water glass in his hand. Too, what was it that he said? How did he phrase it, “What are your interests, what are you about?” I rest my case. What we love we think about.

It is also true that we can think about things that are not good and in fact, unhealthy and obsess over them. For example, “Did you see how she was smirking… she was actually enjoying my embarrassment… and did you hear, she snorted. She derisively, insolently, arrogantly, impudently, snorted.” Snorted! In this, do we love? We definitely think about such things, but do we love? Yes, we love because we can’t understand nor explain the ambiguity of the situation. We love.

Okay, so what’s love got to do with this or anything for that matter? In our relationship with God, we say to ourselves and to God, “I want to know you better”. “I want to feel your presence in my life”. “I want to pursue you”. So we study our bibles and pray, but we haven’t quite captured this precept in our daily devotions. However, if we go back to the revelation, thinking to love… loving to think we now can collectively say, “Aha!” Moreover, if we choose to love we attach. Psalms 1:1-2 said it all along.

“[Happy is the man whose] delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night”.

There are two main assumptions we can extrapolate from this scripture.
1. All who are well pleased that there is a God must also be well pleased that there is a Bible, a revelation of God, of his will, and of the only way to happiness in him.

2. And most poignant, loving God is found by having intimate acquaintance with his word and meditating on it, day and night, delighting in it, which is simply put, loving to think and thinking to love!

This we must do day and night; we must have a constant habitual regard to the word of God as the rule of our actions, the spring of our comforts, and we must have it in our thoughts, accordingly, upon every occasion that occurs, whether night or day. No time is amiss for meditating on the word of God, nor is any time unseasonable. We must not only set ourselves to meditate on God’s word morning and evening, at the entrance of the day and of the night, but these thought should be interwoven with the business and converse of every day and with the repose and slumbers of every night. When I awake I am still with thee.

By the way, did you know that mediate in this passage means murmur? Murmur day and night. Murmur. It is memorization. Maybe you have been challenged or encouraged at the start of this New Year by God or even a brother to commit God’s word to memory. Well, here it is, it comes to this, love to think, think to love.