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When Is Love Present? Jesus gives us a declaration in scripture to love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, and bless those who curse you, and even pray for those who abuse you. We all know that as Christians this makes perfect sense. God loves us unconditionally and we are asked to love others unconditionally. And yet this is not so easy a task to do! When we think of the love we have toward those who are dear to us as that warm, caring, glow of love; how are we able to extend this to those who are mean, abusive, and downright ugly toward us and others? Again, it’s not easy to do! You may ask yourself; how can I love my enemy? Know that genuine love can manifest itself in many ways. Sometimes we may have to move in baby steps with our love. But know that any gesture toward doing good is love. Part of the problem arises in the fact we use one word for love and we use it to describe all kinds of love. We put an adjective with the word love to describe the kind of love we are expressing. For example, there is: familial love, intimate love for a spouse and the physical attachment that goes with it, patriotic love, friendship love, and I love ice cream. These are all levels of some kind of love. Let us think of all the ways love can manifest itself. Look at the birds of the air; the mother bird cares for her young by protecting and feeding them (this is a form of love) until it is time to leave the nest. And just as the mother lion protects and cares for her young with determination, we find that this is love on the mother’s part. The reason we call this love is because it is an enhancement of life. That is what love is; love is the enhancement of life. It may not look exactly like the love we have with family or spouse, but it is none the less love because we desire to do good and bless the lives of those who may be trying to harm us. When we return good instead of evil toward another, we are loving them because we are enhancing life and trying to make it better. When we help the poor, or come to the aid of someone who is bullied, or try and make right an injustice we are bringing love into the situation. We are trying to enhance life and improve it. Love always brings healing and wholeness to the situation and this means God is present because God is love. And remember that with the poor, the infirm, and the troubled, you will find those whose problems are greater than you can fix. Your part is not to fix them, or judge them, or analyze them, your part is to just love them as you are able to. Anything that enhances life, brings good into a life, or makes life better is love in action and is pleasing to God. When we choose to return good instead of evil toward another when we are attacked; we are breaking the cycle of violence. Violence returned toward violence only increases the violence. Good returned in place of violence goes toward neutralizing the violence. This can be considered an act of love. Something as simple as just smiling when we are attacked verbally instead of getting into a heated argument can be looked upon as an act of love because it tries to bring good to the situation. It may not feel like that warm fuzzy feeling of love you feel toward a family member. But it is love none the less and you are heading in the right direction. If we make these attempts to show love by enhancing life and trying to bring good something miraculous will happen to our hearts. We will gain experience at loving and in time we will evolve in being able to love and eventually we will be able to have that warm fuzzy feeling love brings to even those who try and hurt us. Remember, where love is we will always find God present because God is love. Jesus brought love and wholeness to every situation; we should go and do likewise.

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