What Love Is

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.
-1 John 4:16 NIV

 

How can you settle for
This rotten fruit—
black, mushy,
growing grey fuzz
on its skin
that dries your tongue,
chokes you as you attempt to swallow?
This accursed thing
that destroys your innocence,
opens your eyes to impurity,
driving you from paradise—
and call it Love?

How can you give yourself,
mind, body, and soul,
to the whims of the flesh
manifested in a man,
smelling of Jack Daniel’s and Coke,
who shatters hearts for a living,
and then hate Love?

How can you desecrate
the sacrament of marriage,
disrupt the natural order
of the home,
shacking up with a
jobless drifter,
who doesn’t call himself husband,
who sleeps with you for
food and shelter, and
calls your premarital sex,
making Love?

Your heart is corrupted.
Love is all around you,
but you will never find it
living carnally.
Step away from the world.
Find a secret place, any place.

A closet.
Open your heart to
the omnipresent Lover
that comforts you
in the cotton caress
of a coat sleeve
against your cheek.

A garden.
Feel Him in the breeze,
ruffling through the leaves,
sweeping the sweet aroma
of blooming flowers
toward your nose.

A church pew.
Listen for Him
in the soothing silence
surrounding you
as you read words of
Unconditional Love
from an Old Book
written by Saints
who knew Love, saw Love,
was touched, healed by Love.
Saints who have been waiting to
share with you the true Word about
what Love is.

© 2015 Nortina Simmons