Lunch For Three - Day 2

Nooma 002|Flame
"I love those shoes. Really? The same way I love my wife? What's up with the word "love"? It doesn't have much meaning when we use it so loosely. Maybe we don't really get it. Maybe we don't understand what real love is. What it involves to really love somebody. What it means to give yourself to someone else. We mistake things like friendship, commitment, or lust for love, but God wired us a certain way to experience all that love was really meant to be. Not to hold us back or to make us miss out on the best that life has to offer. God created love, and wants us to feel it all in the way it's meant to be felt." - NOOMAtube

Wow, this video gets a little deeper than the Rain video did. Love is a very sensitive subject for many people. Love seems to have hurt just as many people as it has blessed. I really enjoyed the way that Rob broke down the three different Hebrew translations for the word love, "Raya, Ahava, and Dod." Raya was the translation for friendship or companionship between two people. The phase of love that really sets the foundation in the relationship. Ahava is the phase where this companionship moves from being friends and develops a level of commitment to each other. This is the point in the relationship where you make a decision to join your life with another. Finally Dod is the physical, sexual element of a relationship. He goes on to say that Love will not work unless all three types of love are working hand in hand.

He gives an example of two people having an affair. In this instance they are sharing the Dod flame but not including the Raya or Ahava stages of love. This progressions leaves those involved feeling empty and alone, once the physical aspect is through there is no fulfillment in this type of love. There's no friendship, no commitment, no loyalty and no sacrifice. Another example he gives is a relationship that is stuck in the the Ahava stage. They are still committed to each other and to the relationship, but there is no friendship, no intimacy. In these two instances, we strive for the relationship to work based on this one flame and hope that it can provide the heat that the three flames combined provide. But it can't. The single flame flickers and eventually fades away. Any flame that burns by itself will never be as hot as the Raya, Ahava, and Dod flames burning together. God created us for all of our flames to burn as one. "When you separate the flames, it can never really satisfy. It's like you're living outside of how God wired you to live" (Rob Bell). I know that I am in now way a love expert, I've only been married for 8 months. I know that I am not perfect, I am human. However when love is broken down in this manner it begins to make a little more sense.

"May you honor the way that God created you. May you have a profound sense of respect for the fact that you are a deeply spiritual and mysterious being, and that love is a profoundly spiritual thing. May you realize that the three flames are meant to burn together. And may you discover the big flame." Rob Bell

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Please, if you are interested I encourage you to participate and share your thoughts. I would love to get some feedback and hear what each of you took from the day's topic. Just click the comment button at the end of each blog and let me know what you think!