It is safe to say that everyone has loved someone or something in their life time. If you pay close attention to the use of the word love, you'll see it's used a lot. The question is "Do we mean it when we say it?". "Do we know what love is?" or better yet, Do we know how to love?

Wikipedia says love is hard to define because it's used so many ways. People say "I love those shoes" or " I love that song". We also say we love golfing, skiing, and dancing etc. We love our husbands, wives, and lovers, but not the same way we love our family, friends, and neighbors. Are we fooling ourselves? Are we lacking the ability to express our feelings? Maybe we don't know what we feel. All we know is that whenever we get that semi-fuzzy feeling inside about someone or something, we "love" it!

The definition of love in the bible(1 Corinthians:1-13) says: Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

For the most part, people don't argue with the bible, so let's say that love is truly all the things stated in 1 Corinthians. What does that say about so many of us and our feelings of love. A wife will say she loves her husband, but will speak cruel words to him. A husband will tell you he loves his wife, but will stray from his marriage for selfish desires. Parents curse their kids out or display very little patience. Family and friends are quick to dump each other. Husbands and wives divorce. I thought love perseveres. I thought it was kind. It isn't to proud to admit mistakes. Everyone is so quick to get angry. We hardly ever "forgive and let go" when some one has wronged us. But oh... how we want to be forgiven. We lack so many of the qualities stated in 1 Corinthians. Does that mean we don't really love? I think it means we just don't know how and that we sometimes say we love things that we really don't.

The definition of love in the bible makes sense. It's everything we want someone to feel about us. It doesn't make sense to apply these feelings to objects, or things that are unable to return love. I think we simply over use the word love and in return, it diminishes in value. We don't know how to properly describe similar feelings we get for other things or people, so we just sum it up with love.To compare the definition of love with the way we treat things or people we say we love, leave some of us looking down right crazy! We say we love ourselves but we don't respect our bodies or our health. Some of us treat our cars better than we do our kids. WHAT THE?

Let's just put things in perspective. We all have a lot of bad habits to break. A good one to start with is our inability to love correctly. Let's pay attention to the way we treat people we say we love. Use the L word in the correct places to add value. We don't love potato chips. We enjoy them. We like them. We don't love those shoes, but they might be your favorite. Love is a serious thing. Look at the work it takes to love. Don't make it a casual thing. It's far too heavy for that! Love the way you want to be loved. We all want it and we all want to give it. Somewhere along the lines we just forgot how to do it!