Love Changes Everything

Yesterday I heard a sermon based on Hosea. Admittedly, this is not a book in the Bible that I have read. It was interesting to hear so much about it though. One of the ideas the minister drew on was the image of a couple in love. At this exact moment, I have very little trouble imagining this. In fact, I don't have to imagine it at all, because I am now one part of those sappy couples that you see in the street who can't keep their eyes off each other. The minister talked about a line from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Love Changes Everything. I can't help but agree with her.

Love is something we tend to limit to couples. We think in a very narrow definition of how we should and should not love. We are allowed to love only our family and close friends. It is when we begin to love those outside of that box, the helpless and the hopeless, that we get into trouble with the rest of society.

Mother Teresa once said this about working in India. "There are no great acts. There are only little acts with great love." She was so incredibly correct with a simple idea that we sometimes neglect to follow through with. Many of us rush through the day and want to do something good, we really do. We just lack the time to slow down and give people what it is that they are really looking for. Love.

There are always the corny sayings about making something with extra loving and tender care. I have no idea if that actually changes the flavor of anything, but I think it does help. There is a difference from making someone a cup of tea and making them a cup of tea with love. There is a difference from waking someone up and waking them up with love. There is a difference that we sometimes forget. We don't want the amount of love we put into anything make a difference because then we will notice how much many of our actions are lacking.

Love changes things in either what we get or what we give. Love has the power to change the way that we live, despite how much we try to ignore it. When we limit love and try to keep it to just one area of our lives, we show that we don't want to change. We want our lives to stay the way that they are because that's easier for us. It's easier to not see the extra colours in the world or hear the extra sounds. It's easy to lock our hearts away in order to not get hurt. When we do that though, we block out the power of change.

Somedays the change is something the creeps up on you and you don't realize it at all. Other days it is something the hits you like a ton of bricks. When you stop putting your own needs first and think about someone else before yourself. When you are willing to change your life for someone else. When you make plans not simply based on yourself. It is when we change that we grow. That is the power that love has in our lives. It has the power to change everything.