Perfect Love

True, perfect love is rare. So rare, that I've never seen it between two people. Oh, I've seen love. The normal kind. The yes, I love you, until death do us part as long as you do what I want, act how I like, talk as I wish and generally continue to be pleasing to me kind. But true love? That doesn't come along every day. It doesn't even come along every month.

I'm still young but I've learned in my twenty-five years that true love takes determination. It takes steadfastness and the ability to forgive. True love never thinks of itself, only the other. It never looks to please its own desires, never dwells on its own needs. It looks past them to the desires and needs of the one it loves. Always.

True love is always kind. It is always compassionate. It always beautiful. It is tender, humble and sweet. It is not always romantic and at times it must be hard, but it perseveres because it loves. It wants its beloved to be their very best but loves anyway when they fail.

The closest I have ever come to this is with my children, but even here I fail miserably. I am selfish. Too selfish to truly love another person. I could not ever put one person completely above myself. Neither can you.

In all of history, only one has shown this perfect love. He loved when we were unloving. He cared for us, even as we mocked him. He set an example we cannot even begin to comprehend. He loved us with every fiber of his being, enough to give up all that he had to save us from our most wicked and depraved hearts. Jesus loved us as no one else could. And his love continues to this day.

There is nothing like being loved by the one who created you. Nothing is more touching than to know that he looks into my very soul and sees the wickedness that lies there and loves me anyway.

Life is so short. But a blink and we're gone. Don't waste it not knowing the love of your creator. Truer love has never been found.