What is Love

Love. Many use this four letter word emptily, they put upon her body a flesh which is destitute of bones, sinews, blood and heart. She is readily used without meaning - she serves not her true purpose but the purposes of man. But what is Love? what is her nature -  what kind is her likeness? Is she a warm feeling in the stomach of a teenager who has caught the sight of a beautiful over-dressed girl. Is this her, is this her dwelling place? Is she an attitude of acceptance, a despiser of one universal truth - is she the very earth, a Gaia, a memory unforgotten - What is love, where is she whom some poets have slept with in the satin of their beds preferring her to the wives of their youth? Philosophers have chased after her, they have not tarried for a century for they see her mist, they have noticed her trails but yet she transcends their reality - they cannot commit her full reality to thought. They reach the destination where nothing but silence is the only justifiable reception. Socrates could speak no more; Descartes has laid down his pen and the scientist, those prone to the repeatable experiments of the phenomenon have irreversibly euthanize their investigation. What is love, she who had suffered the death of a thousand definitions; she is taking captive by every nation and tribe. Some have imprisoned her, caged her and beaten her but it was not love which they imprisoned for in as much as they have misunderstood her they did not have her. She would not submit herself to such brutes, such beasts. Never will she let herself be caressed by such dogs, never will she let her lips be kissed by those whose breath is as worse as the grave-yard. Her origins are more golding, the diamonds of Africa bow to her majesty, the sun surrendered his chamber for her to use as her footstool. Those who have long held her to be a sentimental being, she slaps into reality. But what is love - who is this mystery who has dominated the pages of history - she has inscribed herself into the imaginations of those who desire the bed of romance. She has become the resentful enemy of the demons; since the beginning she has been a plague to the devil, she has reigned on his parade.

What is love? We cannot say that she is so transcendent therefore it is no good for us to recover her identity - we cannot easily forsake her in the realm of mystery - we cannot let her go as to signify that she is important and yet unimportant. Love, that pillar of majesty, that heaviness and lightness of eternity is to be the chase of a creatures’ soul. Where is she to be found, where is her abode- if one looks under every sundry rock in this unfitting earth will one find her? - is she hidden in the sea - has she gone to play with the squirrels.

I say now that all reason escapes me to define her - all languages born of man will not suffice to do her image justice. Only this I have come to accept will grant me a perfect representation of what love is and where she is to be found, namely, in her own self-revelation to seeking humanity. Where can I find such a revelation, where has she descend, where has she written as to present a surety for my intellect? It is here my friends, it is here. I have found her revelation, I have been given a definition and I have discerned her origins. The perfect revelation of her, it is written, is to be found in the Person of Jesus Christ, her definition had no beginning and possess no end, she is an attribute of an omnipotent being and altogether divine - she is of God and God is love. Love is not God but God is love - it is from him that she proceeds and have her definition. Love belongs to God, she is his possession, and in His own self-revelation, love is revealed as a man’s breath accompanies his speech.

Now suffering humanity you can take a rest from your degradation, you can ascend the hill once more to find love in the Person of Jesus Christ and in God who is love. You who say you have love, if you truly possess her, if you truly have her dwelling in your bosoms, then by this you shall know, namely, that you Love the Lord Jesus Christ and the God, his Father who is love and from whom love proceeds.

K.Oni