Never Lose Your Love

1 John 4:7 “Let us love one another, for love is of God.”

Mary Martin, the star of the great Broadway musical, South Pacific, was handed a note just before she went on stage. It was from her good friend and lyric writer of the musical, Oscar Hammerstein, who was dying. On the note he had written, ‘Dear Mary, a bell’s not a bell till you ring it.  A song’s not a song till you sing it. Love in your heart is not put there to stay. Love isn’t love till you give it away.’ That night Mary Martin sang her songs as she had never sung them before. She was reported to have said after the show, ‘Tonight I gave my love away.’

Life will afford you many opportunities to give your love away. There are plenty out there who desperately need someone to show them love. They have been starved of it, robbed of it. They’ve had it cruelly taken away from them. Life for them has turned sour. They feel unloved and unwanted. They feel it’s somewhat ironic, for they were the ones who rang that bell and sang that song and gave their love away, yet they are the ones who are hurting, they are the ones left to pick up the pieces of a broken heart. Now they don’t know if they’ll ever feel loved again, or worse still, ever be able themselves to love again.

C.S. Lewis, sensing the danger of someone finding themselves feeling too hurt to ever love again, wrote these words of warning: “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; bolt it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love….is Hell.” 

1 John 4:7 “Let us love one another, for love is of God.”  Why is love of God?  Because God is love. (1 John 4:8 &1 6) God doesn’t just love, He is love.  John was called, ‘The Apostle of Love.’ Nobody writes more about love than John. Read 1 John Chs.3 & 4 to see just how much the aged Apostle longs for fellow believers to love God, and love one another. 

‘Heat makes all things expand. And the warmth of love will always expand a person’s heart.’ - Chrysostom

‘What does it look like? It has hands to help others, feet to hasten to the poor, eyes to see misery and want, ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.’ - Augustine

- Pastor David Goudy