All You Need is Love

Love, love is all you need...

...The Beatles peacefully serenaded these lyrics to me during my car ride the other morning. This is a song I've heard time and time again, but this particular morning I decided to be a deep, theological thinker. I imagined the world if love is all we needed, and we all realized that, because if it was a necessity it was what we would strive for, like I strive for making it to lunchtime or sleeping a decent amount, or even communication. Those are necessities, and therefore i do everything in my power to pursue these things and more. What if I loved as much as I spoke?

And what is love? According to Webster, love is classified as a noun AND a verb. The noun "love" consists of mainly shallow, romantic, or sexual definitions. The verb "to love" deals more with the act of feeling affection towards a person or caring for another. I personally favor the verb form, because that means love results in a behavior. Love is evident, and you shouldn't have to guess if someone loves you or not.

God defines love as patient, kind, unselfish, non-boastful and completely absent of pride and jealousy. He tells us that if we love correctly it will never fail. It covers just about every aspect of our internal sin. God IS love. He SHOWED us His love not only on the cross but even by creating us as choosing us. He SHOWS us His love by continuously blessing us and giving us grace abundantly. He is acting on His love.


If all I needed was love, I could forgive some people for things they have done to me because love doesn't keep a record of wrongs.
If all I needed was love, I wouldn't continuously let my circumstances affect me, because I always have an unchanging God who loves me.
If all I needed was love, I wouldn't hurt those who are close to me because love isn't easily angered or rude.
If all I needed was love, I would be able to show more people who God is because loving our neighbor is one of the greatest commandments.
If all I needed was love, I would care more about other people than I cared about myself, because love is not self-seeking.
& I could go on for days...


What if we all showed evidence of love to everyone in our lives? What if we strived to love as much as we strived to think, or talk, or sleep, or eat, or whatever else we consider a necessity? We obviously have a need to be loved. But where is our need to love? John Lennon did have one thing wrong-- it's not exactly easy.

So I'm going to be intentional about this. It seems so simple and cliche, but I don't think humankind will ever get this quite right, but its worth a shot.