The two greatest commandments… what are they? If you have studied the Bible you probably know the answer to this question by heart.

In the Bible, Matt. 27:37-40 is where a couple of verses basically states, the greatest commandment is to love God with all of you and in everything you do, and the second greatest commandment is to love others as you love yourself. Both commandments rest on the idea that people even know what love really means… You have to understand what love is, just to be able to give it properly. Do you agree? At least I think so.

I was talking to this young man as I was leaving the gym tonight. We played a couple of basketball games together, and he looked like a normal kid in his early 20’s or  late teens. He was just a regular guy, I never met him before. Anyway, as I was leaving, I acknowledged him and looked into his eyes and said, “Be blessed man, I’ll holla at you later”. That’s just something I say casually to people, I either tell them, ‘I wish you well’ or ‘Be blessed’, just as a type of friendly cordial salutation. His response shocked me. He looked at me and said, “I never heard anyone say to me, ‘be blessed’….”. I wasn’t prepared for that statement. For an adult to have never heard someone tell them, “be blessed’ is crazy to me… that is a real life tragedy!

There are so many people who desperately need to be loved, and experience being in a positive engaging atmosphere with real positive people. They need to be shown kindness, shown support in their life, and shown a type of love that’s not superficial, and they need to be taught what love really means. So, they won’t create their own definition of love and live in ignorance, not fully understanding how to feel or express love in its completeness.

So what is love?

Is love when you treat someone like you want to be treated? Is love the feeling you feel when you engage in intimate intercourse with someone? Is love when you give someone a hug and a kiss, and tell them, “I love you”? Love is all that and much more!!

Love is so much more than words… If it’s one thing I hate, it’s someone who shows love with only their words. Don’t tell me you love me to be cordial, or suggest it, especially if your actions don’t align with your words. I would rather someone ignore me, than for them to give me a false representation of themselves or lie to me.

If you care to know how I define love, I want to say first that I am a Christian.. however, I am not religious by any means, but I do believe in the Bible as a source of wisdom and truth. I feel love is so powerful. It’s something that is felt spiritually and physically. My definition of love comes from the Bible… not from Webster’s dictionary. It’s in the verses of 1 Corinthians, chapter 13.

~If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, ⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, ⁶  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; ⁷ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸ Love never fails; but if there are gifts of  prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part; ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.¹³ But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love.~