“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis
This week we light the last candle to remind us to love. As the quote from C.S. Lewis states above, to love at all is to be vulnerable. But what do we mean by “love”? After all, you don’t love your mother in the same way you love pizza. You don’t love your spouse in the same way you love your favorite sports team or hobby.
C.S. Lewis explained that there are three different elements to love: Need/Gift love, Pleasure love, and Appreciation love.
Need/Gift love is the kind of love we have when we are thirsty and love the water we have to drink. Or the gift of love we have from God. It’s not something we choose to receive but something we need or we have bestowed upon us.
Pleasure love is the love we have for pizza, our favorite NFL team, hobbies, tv shows, etc. Something that brings us moments of joy but doesn’t give us lasting, fulfilling love.
Appreciation love is the one C.S. Lewis that breaks up into his four famous types of love…
Storge - is the empathetic love. This love is the most natural of all the loves and most regularly related to family.
Philios - is the love for friends. It is the most unatural love and the most difficult to cultivate because of it. C.S. Lewis notes that he cannot remember any poem that celebrated true friendship like that between David and Jonathan, Orestes and Pylades, Roland and Oliver, Amis and Amiles. Lewis goes on to say, "to the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it".
Eros - is the romantic love. This is the love that brings a man and woman to the vocation of marriage. Pope St. John Paul II focused on this love the most in his famous collection of work, Man & Woman, He Created Them: The Theology of the Body.
Agape - this is the love we have for God. The love that leads us to prayer, Sunday worship, and a desire to do good in order to grow closer to God.
In order to love truly and fully, agape should be a part of every other aspect of prayer. Agape paired with eros helps you to love your spouse sacrificially when you don’t feel the warm and fuzzies. Agape paired with philios helps you to love a friend with persistent consistency or through hard times, or even to set healthy boundaries if the relationship turns toxic. And agape paired with storge helps you to love your family when they are driving you up the wall.
The reason it takes pairing with agape to love fully is because God is love. God wants to pour out Himself out for you - to you - so that you can spread His love to others. He loves unconditionally when you are too tired, lonely, angry, or hurt to do it yourself. With only the word “love” to describe love in English, we loose the many types of ways the Lord wants to help us love others.
Spend some time to sit and pray about the different loves in your life this week. Ask the Lord where He wants to love you more so that you can love others more perfectly.
He has so much love to give you. Will you let Him love you this week?
Scriptures on Love to Pray With
Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. - 1 Corinthians 13:5-7
Try taking this verse to pray and insert your name wherever you see “love.” Ask the Lord to help you with Agape wherever you find you need more love.Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have graven you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me. - Isaiah 49:15-16
Let me hear in the morning of thy steadfast love, for in thee I put my trust. Teach me the way I should go, for to thee I lift up my soul. - Psalm 143:8
Above all hold unfailing your love for one another, since love covers a multitude of sins. - 1 Peter 4:8
So we know and believe the love God has for us. God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. - 1 John 4:16
Love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor. - Romans 12:10