“Love Isn’t Love ‘Til You Give It Away”

I have always loved these lines of a song from “The Sound of Music”:
A bell is no bell ’til you ring it
A song is no song ’til you sing it
And love in your heart wasn’t put there to stay
Love isn’t love… ‘Til you give it away

The essence of love is in the giving. But you cannot give away what you do not have. Thus, the beginning of love is a true and healthy love of self. If I find myself loveable, then I will find myself worth giving to others. Sometimes though this love of self stops there and it becomes stale and selfish narcissism.

There is a lot of anger and hatred in the world. But there is also a lot of love and lot of generous giving. We only need to choose to see and believe in goodness and love. For every man that rises against another in anger and hatred, there are hundreds who willingly choose to do good and believe in love – to heal the wounds inflicted by that anger and hatred, to care for those hurt by the violence, to take under their wings those who are in need and in trouble, to hug and dry the tears of those in sorrow.

Love, in its outward trajectory, goes out in ripples that create a community of lovers and loved ones. And in every community, there will be those who will act selfishly and for themselves alone. But there will be more who will care and share, who will be willing to forgive and give of themselves, who will embrace in their arms even the unembrace-able, who will see beauty and goodness in everyone. For true love is a choice, a decision.

Love, like life, will not be denied. It will grow and grow it will in the most unexpected places, in the most improbable manner and in the most opportune time.

‘Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’
John 17: 20-26