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The Language of Love

     So it's Valentine's Day and couples are expressing their feelings to the one they love all day long.  Gifts, flowers, candy, and all manner of expressions of amour abound today.  Let me take advantage of the occasion, and challenge everyone to stop for a minute and consider your love language when talking to those with which you do not have an intimate connection.  As you know, it is easy to tell someone you are attracted to or committed to that you love them.  Well, at least most times it is.  Some people we love out of obligation because they are family, and some we are actually in love with.  Some we started out loving and somewhere along the way fell out of love, but we're hanging on to the relationship for reasons we can't explain.  I get it.  Today is tough for you because you're expected to express something you may not feel.  (Sigh) So now you have to tell a lie.  Let's consider this complicated issue.
     Whether you are in the situation just described or whether it's your relationship with a neighbor, coworker, boss or ex-somebody, we still all must and should speak the language of love to those we interact with regularly.  Let me clarify that I'm not referring to the Five Love Languages that Dr. Gary Chapman teaches in his book of the same name.  I'm referring to simple phrases and meaningful conversations that speak to the hard job of loving humanity.  It is hard to love people.  Even for people like me who tend to be people-focused, not everyone is lovable, and that's what makes loving humanity hard.  However, despite the many hangups all of us have, if we expressed love over hate which seems to be the preference of today, then we could stamp out a lot of the senseless wrongs that are committed.  Whether prejudice and discrimination, jealousy, greed, ignorance, poverty, arrogance or abuse, the driver in all of these is hatred.
     The simple antidote to hate is love.  You don't have to be romantically linked to another individual to show them you care or at the very least that you don't hold any animosity toward them.  You need only practice peace, kindness, and gentle words in your dealings with them.  If they don't receive your efforts, you lose nothing.  You have contributed one more act of love in a world that seems to counter it like war to compromise.  I believe if we keep intentionally pumping love into a seemingly loveless world, ultimately, we can fill it like a bucket at a well.  It will at some point overflow.
     Remember that the Holy Bible describes love as being patient with those who may not love us back.  Love makes us want to be kind to those who may want to spite us.  Love doesn't make us lust after those things that belong to someone else.  Love isn't arrogant and boastful.  Love isn't so filled with pride that it doesn't allow us to show humility.  Love takes into consideration other people's feelings so we think first
about how we come across to them; we try not to be offensive.  Love makes us want to put other people's wants and needs ahead of our own.  Love doesn't make us fly off the handle when something happens we don't like.  Love doesn't keep a running list of what we did wrong; it promotes forgiveness.  Love makes us suffer with others when bad things happen to them.  We don't rejoice in their hardships even though they may have wronged us.  Love is honest.  It removes the desire to cheat or betray another human being.  It always finds ways to be a fence of protection against the evil forces in the world; it seeks to be agreeable first and trust another person; it keeps hope alive; and love never gives up on people.  Love never fails. (1Cor. 13:3-8)  Express love today to everybody.

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