“Falling in love” is a term that gets a bad rap.
It has been suggested that we do not “fall” in love but rather “choose” to love. The older I get, the more I reject this as a false and downer dichotomy.
Mature love ends up making a lot of choices that are very deliberate and godly. My cousin chose to love his wife though she ended up in a wheel chair well after their wedding and for most of their long marriage. So, he went from dancing with her to wheeling with her. That had to be a choice. By the way, it was love that was hard to miss.
But “falling” suggests some out-of-control relinquishment. I think there is something to be said about that. I am not talking about the woman who looks at her husband’s beer belly hanging over the Lazy Boy as he watches his 1,000th football game on a Sunday afternoon and says, “What was I thinking?”
No, I’m suggesting that there is a bit of magic that’s quite unpredictable and may even be out of character when it comes to the choice of a mate or boyfriend or girlfriend. And it’s not always about physical attributes or some specific identifiable characteristic.
It’s simply “falling.”
I believe there is a bit of that when someone comes across Jesus. It’s certainly paradoxically logical and emotional to fall in love with him when we read about his compassion or healing during our initial phases with him.
But like any marriage, there are every-moment choices as our walk with Christ develops. Just ask Valentine who fell for Christ as a young man and fell for Christ as an older man and martyr on February 14th.
PORTAL TO HEAVEN: Emotions are a wonderful portal that often bring us closer to heaven’s reality. But choices that involve suffering are usually their counterpart.
Love [CHOOSES TO] suffer(s) long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails…Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous…Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life…
1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV, Hebrews 13:4 ESV, John 15:13 NKJV,
Editor’s bracket and parenthesis.