Can love be measured?

If you are not an avid reader and you are not interested in reading this whole post, my short answer to the question, ‘Can love be measured?’ is - not only do I think that love can be measured but I think we do measure it unconsciously, all the time! We even try and communicate this in subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways. When I’m teaching nouns in my English class, I always explain that nouns are naming words and that they usually name things which we can touch and feel. Then (as every good English teacher does) I qualify that nouns also name some things which cannot be touched, like emotions, like love. But what if we had to think about love as something which was quantifiable, like any other substance (am I walking on hallowed ground here?), not to an exact amount, but at least to the extent where we could use words like “little”, “more” and “much” when comparing it. I am getting ahead of myself already you see? For I am assuming that I can use the same words that I might use to compare, say, sand, or something. Should I rather be speaking about love like it were a kind of wealth and use words like “cheap”, “average” and “expensive”? I don’t know. What I am learning is to think of love as though it were a kind of energy source. With enough of this fuel I am able to do certain things that without love are very difficult or impossible to do.

Now I said earlier that I think we measure people’s love all the time without really thinking about it. Think about this scenario. If your car runs out of petrol just out of town, who do you call? Probably the person who loves you the most, right? Well how would you measure who loves you the most? Kinda makes you think doesn’t it? We have so many different kinds of relationships with people and the word “love” is used so liberally. What I want to know is, what brings a friend with a can full of petrol way out there to where you are sitting next to the freeway in the baking hot sun? There are lots of people on your friend list that you could cross off for that kind of favour I’m sure!

The longer I experience life, the more I am convinced that love is the kind of energy that prompts people to action. The less love we have, the less resolve we have to move into action. There are some relationships which we will have where there is a kind of warm comradery, but when you are moving your furniture into your new house, they are the last people who you think to call. There are some others who you feel you could ask, but when you do they make noises that they will be there but very seldom or never are. So you convince yourself that somewhere deep in their hearts they do love you and that your request just came at a particularly difficult time for them (ha!) Is there such a thing as a really loving person who never gives help when you need it? Probably not.

This brings me to the heart of the matter I think. The measure of love is sacrifice. Love is the energy that empowers me to serve another person. The amount of times I choose to put my good intentions into action is the true value of my love. When we try to communicate how much we love our “special other” (and here I speak from personal experience ;- ) it inevitably dissolves into promises of fidelity, commitment and then finally,

[singing]

“Cause baby,

There ain't no mountain high enough

Ain't no valley low enough

Ain't no river wide enough

To keep me from getting to you!”

And what a great song that is too. (But that’s a topic for another blog…) If that one is a bit too old-school for your taste, why not try a bit of Bruno Mars,

“You know I’d catch a grenade for yaaaaaaaa”

Why do we go there? Why do we end up speaking about crossing high mountains and swimming across wide rivers and catching grenades when we try to communicate the extent of our love? I think it’s like a universally understood truth that the harder the circumstances, the tougher the task, the greater the sacrifice, the more readily the circumstance offers itself as an opportunity for love to show it’s true colours. I think true love is much less about having good times together and enjoying each others company than it is about serving each other.

What really got me started on this topic were a few things that Jesus had to say to the churches in the book of Revelation. To each church he speaks about their “works”. Now that would seem like a strange thing to speak about seeing as though we are no longer saved by good works. But Jesus almost used the actions of these people’s lives as a litmus test to measure how much they loved Him. In fact there was not a single church to which he says, “Hey guys, you may not look like you love me by your lifestyles, but don’t worry, I can see the love in your hearts and I know that you mean well.” He also says in another place, “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friend.” So on a scale of “little”, “more” and “much”, dying for the person that you love tops the scale.

That’s why we’ll wake up every two hours of the night to feed the baby, why we’ll quietly suffer the arrogant teenagers until they learn humility, why we get to church early to setup, why we make an effort to blunt the prickly parts of our personalities and learn to listen more than we speak, that’s why we are not only willing but eager to get up and fetch someone from the airport at short notice when it’s just gone mid-night (ok, but that one’s for girlfriends only, no chancers please), it’s because of love, genuine love.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

*Afterthought: My intention with this post is not to give us a scale by which to measure the love of others, I am exploring what love is and what true love looks like because I think it is often misunderstood. No judging please! J