Learn To Love Again
Sung by Bernie Knee
Music Marcello J. Garzillo
Lyrics Grace Garzillo
Conducted by Fred Barovic
Love is without a doubt the strongest emotion there is, but what is love and where does it come from? How can a person not confuse love with need? These are difficult questions but if we search honestly, the answers will come. It is a rare person who doesn’t have some degree of love toward his fellow man. It is also a rare parent who doesn’t love his children and at times overly protect them. Some parents continually supply their children with gifts, some with too much discipline and some with not enough discipline. Where’s the balance?
Notice in the title of the song the word “learn”. It is fair to say that most have a natural expression of their kind of love. We’ve heard over the years many love songs, sung with real emotion, conveying an artist’s brand of love. So many have interpreted love by the actions of their world and the ideas of learned scholars passing on their understanding of the topic of love. This song focuses on the word “learn” and its relationship to the word love.
God is Love
The apostle John tells us in 1st John 4:16 that God is love.
There are times in our lives where things go wrong and we’ll say something like, “I’ll never do that again”. It is almost like we wish there was some way we could know about our mistakes before they occur. There again, the focus should be on the word “learn”. But how do we learn or who do we learn from?
It seems that the Apostle Peter was perplexed when Jesus asked him three times in John 21:15, if he, Peter, loved him. Of course Peter says yes in answering. And Jesus response is to feed His lambs and feed His sheep. What exactly has feeding to do with love? The Apostle Paul gives us the answer.
1st Corinthians 13:1, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, (love), I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling symbol”.
The word charity in the Greek dictionary is love. In our present English dictionary, the word charity is defined as the love of God and for humanity, or a love of ones fellow human beings. What about childish love or love of self? The apostle Paul addresses that idea also.
Verse 11, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child: but when I became a man ( mature ), I put away childish things”.
The only way for a child to grow into a mature human being is by proper feeding. You can’t eat for someone else, but you can help someone else to feed themselves into maturity. This is the biblical instruction as to the use of the word love as intended in the word of God. How do you love your enemies? Do you give them some inspiration or input to build on rather than tear them down? The expression “ love your neighbor as yourself” implies the same instruction. One shouldn’t want a different standard for his neighbor than for himself. This is what maturity is all about. The Apostle Paul wrote much of the New Testament and many of his writings are instructional and for correction in righteousness no matter what the age of the reader.(see 2nd Timothy 3:16). He instructs men and women who, with the understanding of God, could do better and become more mature. He was directing them into God’s feeding which will grow our natural love into a Godly love within us. His instruction was always with the intent of glorifying his Heavenly Father.
The lyric in the song tells us that something had to be learned. “My mind was free not me tells us that his thinking was wrong and he was made to suffer the consequences, Remember Paul’s ambition was to go to Damascus to persecute Christians until God struck him down. The love Paul had for his religion was directed toward his self interest and the only way to solve the problem with Christians was to eliminate them. God had to change Paul’s mind concerning his actions. Paul’s change was not like men who convince others by persuasion and human reasoning. His change came because God had written His brand of love not on a heart of stone as he once had, but he was”. now been given a fleshly heart.
Ezekiel 36:26, “A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.”
It is the love of God that would radiate not inward but outward toward our fellow man. This was a learning experience for the Apostle Paul.
Act 17:6, and when they had found them not, they drew Jason and certain brethren unto the rulers of the city, crying, ” These that have turned the world upside down have come here also.”
All men need to realize that love is a growing emotion. Love can’t be forced, bought or demanded. It grows from within every individual and extends outward to our fellow man, family and community.
It is written in 1st John 4:16, that God is love, and at the same time Paul writes in Hebrews 12: 6, “For whom the Lord loveth He chastened.” . A parent will correct the same way for the good of the children, and yet the children don’t realize the love for them that prompted the good that would come out of the correction .We are told in scripture how Jesus Christ became the ultimate sacrifice because of His love of men and woman who are in the world. Most of us don’t even think on that kind of level. From time to time we hear of heroics of some toward his fellow man but that is a rarity. But how many would do as Jesus did, give his life for a sinner. Evidently, there is a grander kind of love than we naturally experience, even with our own children and other loved ones. I guess the only way we might achieve that kind of love is to go to the only one who is the embodiment of love and learn what love is all about.
Poem by Grace Garzillo
GOD IS LOVE
Love is kind,
love is fair,
never rude,
wans to share,
never push,
never shove,
God is love.
The thoughtless little things,
we do each day,
they really do affect
what others say,
but if we only stop
to take the time,
to think before we act,
you know, we’d find
that God is love.