What does love feel like? Can you see it, does it have a voice? Do you always know it’s around you or can you sometimes miss it? I don’t think some terms have definitions. We can try and explain what love is based on our experiences and reasoning, but lately I’ve been thinking love is something more than a word in a dictionary.

I placed a sign above my door a few weeks ago that says “Approach it with love.” And ever since having that sign up, it seems that I have been more intentional with finding acts of love surrounding me. I feel like for so much of the time I miss the love around me. I catch the obvious acts, but the littler stuff is harder. I get too caught up on the latest important thing that I forget to focus on what I should really be looking for. It’s been neat to approach each day with the intention of seeing how the people around me portray and demonstrate love to others.

There are some things that seem so simple yet mean the world to people, and it’s these things that have been standing out to me the most recently. And most of these things usually arise from simply asking how others are doing. Sometimes this comes through a specific question, but more often than not it’s just sitting down beside someone and asking how their day went.

I think this is the part about people who hand out tracts or shout the Gospel to passerby’s that really annoys me. For me, a follower of Christ is meant to live a Christ-like life, which from reading through the New Testament seems to mean to live a love-filled life. How is it that a person shouting on the street corner is demonstrating God’s love to their neighbors? I don’t see how that can happen until you sit down beside someone and ask about their day.

And sometimes I forget that non-Christians aren’t the only ones we are meant to act like this towards. It’s equally as important for us to love other Christians. And yeah this seams obvious, but this week it finally became evident to me. Simply to see others pray for me and take the time out of their schedules to connect with the stuff going on in my life was the coolest thing. Personal prayer is important, but praying with other Christian friends is equally as important.

Sometimes it’s easy to get discouraged and unsure about the state of affairs around the world. A few days ago I walked through a World Vision exhibit about AIDS in Africa and what is happening around the country. Then tonight I heard a speaker talk about his background as a former terrorist who used to train radical extremists in Iran, and then his eventual encounter with Christ. And we hear about all these things happening around us that make our hearts just ache. Because deep down we know that God did not intend for the planet to be like this.

I’m working on my thesis project for the next two years and will be focusing on community development and relief work in areas such as South America and Africa. And it seems that each day, more and more people are looking for answers. Why is it so hard to turn things around? Why can’t the world just be the way that our hearts truly long for? Where do we look for a solution?

I don’t think we can find the answer to these questions anywhere on a website or in a book. Because the only solution is love. And love has no definition, it is only experienced. This is why when you go to Africa and witness the love around you, the spark of hope ignites within you that there truly is a solution. But you won’t find that in a book. You can’t even find it in an organization’s mission statement. It’s something more.

Its Christ’s love.

But we don’t really know or understand that kind of love. Its’ something that we try so hard to obtain, yet always fall short. That kind of love is so different that we don’t know how to approach it. Yet we know that it is pure and good and what this world needs.

Crowder put a new album out this week and his one song has a verse that refers to this kind of love.

“Surely We Can Change”
-David Crowder

and the problem is this
we were bought with a kiss
but the cheek still turned
even when it wasn't hit
and i don't know
what to do with a love like that
and i don't know
how to be a love like that

So how do we be that kind of love. If we want to start making a change in this world, it’s time that we start making a change in the way we love others. I don’t know what forms it will show up in, but the opportunities are there, we just need to look for them more intentionally.