“LOVE”

“Love”

If we want to love, we must have peace, joy, and hope. We must hope in others, hope that they may change for the better! Quality relationships with Jesus, community, and significant others will bring us joy and peace, leading us to love! We must take inventory of our lives and decide if it's time to forgive those who wronged us or if it’s time to seek new relationships.

1938 Harvard Glueck Study on happiness:

Good genes are nice, but joy is better

Harvard study, almost 80 years old, has proved that embracing community helps us live longer and be happier.

“The surprising finding is that our relationships and how happy we are in our relationships have a powerful influence on our health,” said Robert Waldinger, director of the study, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “Taking care of your body is important, but tending to your relationships is a form of self-care, too. That, I think, is the revelation.”

The study revealed that close relationships, more than money or fame, keep people happy throughout their lives. Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.

“When the study began, nobody cared about empathy or attachment. But the key to healthy aging is relationships, relationships, relationships.”

Reference: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

1 Corinthians 13

Recipe for love:

13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b]but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

The Bible describes love as a commitment to care for and serve others, and as the greatest commandment. The Bible teaches that love is not just a feeling but a way of relating to others. Here are some Bible verses about love: 

* 1 Corinthians 13:4–8aLove is patient, kind, and does not envy, boast, or insist on its own way. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. 

* John 15:12-13"My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends". 

* Matthew 5:44–45"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven". 

* Romans 13:8"Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law". 

* Song of Solomon 8:6-7"Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, jealousy is fierce as the grave". 

* Ephesians 5:25"For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her".