Love does not make sense. It doesn’t today, and it didn’t 3,000 years ago when the wise Agur wrote these words:
There are three things which are too wonderful for me, four which I do not understand: The way of an eagle in the sky, the way of a serpent on a rock, the way of a ship in the middle of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid (Proverbs 30:18-19, NASB).
Love between a man and a woman is not easy to understand; sometimes it is not even easy to detect. Is Peter Parker in love with Mary Jane Watson? Who knows? He sure doesn’t.
“Tell us about yourself, Peter,” asks Rosie Octavius. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Uh, well … I really don’t know,” says Peter.
Even Spider-Man has trouble with love.
Dr. Octavius knows a thing or two about love: “Love should never be a secret. If you keep something as complicated as love stored up inside, it can make you sick.” Wow. For a scientist, he sure does know something about the human heart.
We humans were made in the image of God. We read in the Bible that God is love (see 1 John 4:16) and that out of this love He gave His only Son (see John 3:16). Since we are made to resemble God, it is in our nature to love and to give as well. If we don’t, if we keep love bottled up on the inside, it can make us sick. Remember, God said at the very beginning that it is not good for man to be by himself. God created man and woman to be a couple, a team, to be more than two individuals. God created them to become one.
Love is a very strong emotion. Love for others motivated Mother Teresa to care for others for most of her life. Love for children keeps parents seeking the best for a rebellious child. And love can keep a man and woman together through desperately hard times.
But love is not an easy emotion to control.
“I finally got lucky in love,” says Otto.
“We both did,” his wife gently corrects. “But it’s hardly perfect. You have to work at it.”
We are all selfish by nature, some more than others, but all of us have the selfishness gene in our makeup. So while it may seem easy to give of ourselves during courtship, after we say “I do,” it becomes harder. Rosie Octavius is right: Even the greatest of relationships is not perfect, and it takes constant work to keep it going.
C. S. Lewis wrote a whole book on love, which he called The Four Loves. In it, he has this to say about how long the feelings of love can last:
Can we be in this selfless liberation for a lifetime? Hardly for a week. Between the best possible lovers this high condition is intermittent. The old self soon turns out to be not so dead as he pretended—as after a religious conversion. In either he may be momentarily knocked flat; he will soon be up again; if not on his feet, at least on his elbow, if not roaring, at least back to his surly grumbling or his mendicant whine.1
But back to Peter. He listens to the stories Otto and Rosie share about how they met, how they fell in love. It involved some reading of T. S. Eliot, a poet from the first half of the twentieth century. Otto says Eliot is hard to understand (a position shared by your humble authors), but recommends that Peter find some poetry to read with the one he loves.
Knowing that you, just like Peter, will eventually meet that one true love, we want you to be prepared. Thus, we offer the following love poems for your use. You can thank us later.
Sonnet XLIII
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
A Red, Red Rose
Robert Burns
O my Love’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Love’s like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still, my Dear,
Till a’ the seas gone dry.
Till all the seas gone dry, my Dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
I will love thee still, my Dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare thee well, my only Love!
And fare thee well, a while!
And I will come again, my Love,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile!
The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Without love, what are we worth?
Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth
of chemicals walking around lonely.
—Hawkeye, M*A*S*H
At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.
—Plato
Those who try to explain love between a guy and a girl are fighting a losing battle. And if romantic love is hard to explain, how could we ever hope to make sense of the greatest act of love ever shown?
What is the greatest act of love ever shown, you ask? There has never been a greater show of love than when God sent His only Son, Jesus, to suffer and die in our place. Truly, there can be no greater act of love than this. And at least to us, two guys who aren’t all that good at higher math, it makes about as much sense as nuclear fusion.
If someone were to roll a hand grenade into a room where you and we, Adam and Jeff, were sitting, either of us would gladly jump on the bomb to save your life. (Every reader is precious to us!) But we’re sorry—if that same hand grenade were rolled into that same room, neither of us could take his son (for Adam, it’s Noah; for Jeff, it’s Mark) and throw him on the grenade to save your life. We just could not do that.
And yet that is what God did for us. He took His only Son and cast Him on the cross to save our lives. It’s awesome, it’s unbelievably incredible … and it makes no logical sense.
But just because we can’t explain it, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. In fact, it is true. And we’re awfully glad it is.
Aren’t you?
Note
1. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1960), p. 61.