Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Love without action is meaningless, and action without love is irrelevant. Deepak Chopra
If we want to see real love, we don’t see it among the young and beautiful; they still have to find out what kind of love they have. Will it get through the tough parts of life, and still be there when they are no longer young and beautiful?
I saw real love yesterday, while visiting the best friends of my husband’s parents. They got married in their late thirties or forties and have been married for about forty-six years. They live in a house with steep stairs, and one of her relatives said she could see an accident waiting to happen, so they got a stair lift installed. One August morning, the lady got up. Her husband was still sleeping, so she made her way downstairs and somehow fell off the chairlift. Her husband heard her fall and ran to help her, only to fall on top of her, and the chairlift then fell on him.
The next Saturday, a lady from their church knocked on the door to deliver food that she and her husband delivered every Saturday. When she got no answer, she called the church office. Everyone felt that if they were going away, they would have told someone. The police were called, and they had to break down the door where they found the two of them on top of each other, unconscious. Four days they were like this, and had this lady not been sure something wasn’t right, they would have died a heap on the floor.
Love is a verb: It’s an action requiring your involvement and your active participation. You cannot sit back and expect the world will serve it to you. You cannot expect that your relationship will continue to provide love while you’re not putting in any effort. Love has to be earned and must be continually fought for. Stephen Covey
They are home from the hospital, and they aren’t sure if they will be able to take care of themselves completely yet, but have a lady staying with them for now. As we talked to this couple, they are convinced they are alive only by the grace of God, because both of them survived a fall down a steep set of stairs, and four days without food or water feels like a miracle to them, and it feels like one to me, too.
When people tell us they’ve encountered Jesus or God in their lives, do we believe them? The lady said she encountered a vision of Jesus years ago on a bus and has been led to pray for people who recovered from illness. As the two of them talked to us, during parts of it, they held hands, and tears came to the husband’s eyes, as he said, “She’s my girlfriend.” He didn’t say it because he didn’t know they were married, but because they’ve led a life where, other than work, when you saw one of them, you saw the other.
Had they died in a heap on the floor together, it wouldn’t be as sad as it sounds, because living without each other is, I think, the saddest outcome they can imagine. They are grateful to be alive, to be together, and to be in their own home.
We don’t want to be in our neighbors’ business, and have the police knock down doors when they’ve only gone out for a while. But, I am wondering how the neighbors feel knowing an older couple who lived beside them lay on the floor in a heap for four days. One of the problems might be if we aren’t seeing our neighbors coming and going from their home, not seeing any movement will not make us think something is wrong.
When we have an intuition that something isn’t right, could the voice of God be speaking to us?
Love cannot remain by itself – it has meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service. Mother Teresa
Love is not words; it’s actions, and love isn’t feelings; it’s a decision. Stevin Furtick
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. John 3:18
Thank you for reading this post. Please come back and read more and have a blessed day filled with gratitude, joy, and love.