A simple conversation one evening generated something that still leaves me in awe. It was the evening before Thanksgiving 2009. Family had gathered at my sister’s house in Beeville, TX. Someone, I think it was my niece, Courtney, asked a question about love. Not the generic, common love that pervades the world. Not the kind of love expressed on a wedding day that shed after the honeymoon. She was inquiring about something deeper, something more profound, something enduring.
Now I’m no expert on this subject. I wasn’t taught this when I was younger. Principles were later taught to me, but rarely, if ever, had I seen then born out in life. Love was something of a mystery, maybe, something more akin to what could be found in a Utopian world. But here? Not so much.
I’m fairly convinced that I didn’t come to understand love until I came to understand God. After all, God is love (1 John 4:8). I’m certain he’s the one who’s taught me most about it. He’s the one who’s shown it most definitively.
My own love is shallow and self-centered. My own love has limits. Cross me and most people have found it out. I think that’s why I evaded the subject for so long. But when God is convinced you are ready, he will bring you to your knees to show you that your love isn’t good enough, but His love is.
So back to Thanksgiving 2009… I addressed the question very delicately. My family knows altogether too well my shortcomings. My wife knows altogether too well my failings. So I wasn’t about to bust in there like someone who had the market on this subject, but I gingerly began to express what I’d come to know about AGAPE. AGAPE is Greek for the highest form of love there is.
Our English word love is so general. The Greeks, though, they divided up their concepts of love into various forms. AGAPE, without question, is the strongest form. It is the love that would cause God to take human form and offer himself a ransom for all (John 3:16). AGAPE is other-oriented. AGAPE isn’t about what I can get, its about what I can give.
I also elaborated on the other forms of love, but they weren’t the focus. They were simply incidental so as to set apart AGAPE. Now, though, when I mention “AGAPE” or when my wife and/or sisters utter the word, we all begin to think the same thing. My sister, Jennie, seems to drop it wherever she goes. It’s become a code word for us. No, it’s become even more than that. It is as if God wants us to see that he’s placed it in places we’ve forgotten about, and then wants us to leave it behind wherever we go.
AGAPE gives me chills. It, at times, warms. But it always creates fascination.
More to come later. In fact, I’ll share with you what happened on Thanksgiving Day of 2009 that changed the course of everything that holiday!
