love is free.

love
–noun

1.	a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.

2.	a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.

3.	sexual passion or desire.

4.	a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.

5.	(used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?

6.	a love affair; an intensely amorous incident; amour.

7.	sexual intercourse; copulation.

Love - one of the hardest words in the english language to define - in my opinion at least. dictionary [dot] com makes seven (the number of perfection huh... coincidence?) attempts on defining the word (shown above) and most fall short when compared to the Bible's.

now, i'm not much of a note-taker and most of my high school teachers can attest with the low test scores, but a few weeks ago i took more notes than i probably ever have. it was a friday night when my church's college group Bible study saw "Flame," one of the many Nooma dvd's by Rob Bell. the dvd spoke of love and the definitions the Bible gives us of the word throughout it's "sexiest" book "Song of Songs."

bold = original hebrew word.
raya: friend or companion - somebody you hang out with.
example: Thou [art] all fair, my friend, and a blemish there is not in thee (Song of Solomon 4:7).

ahava: love of the will, commitment. more profound than romantic feelings or temporary urges. ahava is making a decision to join your life to the life of another.
example: Many waters are not able to quench the love, And floods do not wash it away. If one give all the wealth of his house for love, Treading down -- they tread upon it. (Song of Solomon 8:7).

dode: to rock or fondle, physical, sexual.
example: Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth, For better [are] thy loves than wine.

after reading those definitions of love, the first thought that ran across my mind was "damn, english is a pretty simple language, why can't we have different words for love?" wouldn't life be so much simpler when it comes to expressing your true feelings for someone?

i mean, how many times has a good friend of ours looked at us weird for saying "i love you" to them? instead we could have just said "hey bro, i raya you." hah, wouldn't that make life simpler, or is it just me?

i don't know, love is a confusing thing isn't it? we lose friends, jobs, and sleep over it all the time. regardless of the hardships attributed to it, i believe love is the most important thing on this earth, and G-d calls us to love not only Him, but his creations. why? because he created them in His image. my good friend Johnfrank once said: "to deny love to a stranger is to deny G-d," and believe him to be right.

now, don't get too excited, that doesn't mean you should dode everyone... or anyone for that matter, but it does mean you should raya everyone. as "christians" (i hate this label, but thats for another blog) we should love everyone. the ones who have wronged us, hate us, deceived us, cheated on us, the list goes on and on.

G-d is love.
G-d is free.
love is free.

there is nothing more important in this world than love. if every single person on the earth loved each other we wouldn't even need "unconditional love" because no one would wrong their neighbors. think about that for a bit... no wars, no murder, no suicide, no pain...

unfortunately though, as we all know, thats not the case, and thats why i believe that as followers of Christ we are called to be the change. to start a movement that should have started generations before us. a movement of love, unconditional love that shines Christ's love through us. to end the wars, murders, suicides, and pain.

so i ask you this:
1. define love and...
2. how can us "christians" show Christ's love to non-believers?
[answer in the comments section]

love is the movement.