Love to me, is the most maligned, overused, cover-up word I have ever heard. Women are beaten by the same man, they claim loves them. Parents treat children at times, more harshly then they would a friend, while claiming they love them. So love, for the personality of man, can also include a darker side to it, than the poets words of love!

For a moment, lets see some examples of Christ's love. Would we all see His love, expressing our ideal of what loves means to us?

Let's first see Jesus, as a young boy, leaving His parents in the marketplace, without telling them where He was going. Most parents would be infuriated by His lack of concern for them. Yet, we all know Christ was the most loving of all humanity, how could He do this to them? His love shows us where , even at that young age, Christ purpose was known to Him. That His need took Him to the Temple, to talk with the priests. That His spiritual nature was strong, and that His Heavenly Father meant so much to Him, that He would even not think of His parents worrying for Him. Why would Christ believe, His parents would be worried? He wouldnt! Because His understanding of His Heavenly Father, never would conclude in Him, the idea of worry? This small example shows us, where Christs love was and where it always remained focused on.

Christ then asked some people He chose to speak to, about something so great that few could have said no? And in order for them to learn these lessons, the first thing He did, was to take them from all that was familiar to them. THey were taken away, because they also were going to be taken away in their minds and hearts to another place of learning. A place very different from whence they came. They were called upon to think out of the box. To see things that were common in their lives, in a new and more loving, light. They were asked to sit with prostitutes, and theives, to humble their hearts to all men who suffered. They were told to love all, as if they were your brothers and sisters. They saw Him heal the untouchables, people who were banished because of an unwarrented, disease.

He told them things that were going to happen, before they happened. He told them not to be afraid, that when He was no longer with them in the physical, He would send them the Holy Spirit in His Name. So that all they needed to live this new life, would be given them, through the spirit of God , they would find within.

He celebrated and made sacred, marriage. By turning what was commonplace, into what something miraculously Divine.

His love threw men out of the Temple, because it had become commerical. It had lost its purpose in being a sacred place, a holy place, a place that doesnt bargain for pennies, what cant be gotten with hundreds or thousands or millions! All these things were also part of His Love. He spoke up, for what was not right, for those who were being made lesser, to those who believed themselves superior. He tore down the false to lay a foundation of what IS TRUE. All this can not be understood, by just the use of one word.. All who He IS is so much more than can exist in a simple word such as love.

Mans personality uses the words of love, but do they ever use love, in the Way Christ expressed His Love? Can we truly love our neighbor as Christ loved, if we know so little about how we love, or our own need to be loved?

Love in itself is a life long lesson. And then to love as Christ loved, requires even more. We also have to love enough to gain our place in Heaven. So when we think of love, lets remember Love in the Likeness of Christ... more than in the flowerly love of a poets musings. Or in the love hate relationship that at most, defines man.