Hello Everybody!
Today, I want to talk about Unrequited Love. What is it?
According to dictionary.com it is:
adjective 1. not returned or reciprocated: unrequited love.2. not avenged or retaliated: an unrequited wrong.
3. not repaid or satisfied.
It’s the feeling of being completely, hopelessly, desperately in love with someone, all the while knowing that your feelings will never reach them.
It’s contradictory in that you feel incredible because you love someone so much, but also at the same time you feel almost overwhelming despair because you will never know what it is like to hold them in your arms, or touch their face, or kiss their lips. You will never know what it is like to wake-up next to them in bed in the morning, bodies entwined.
It can be masochistic in nature- it causes such heartache, but you enjoy loving the person so much, you willingly let your heart go through the agony, so you can hold onto something- I don’t know, maybe hope?
In any case, unrequited love is a very sad thing.
It seems that unrequited love is a lonely feeling that one feels when the emotions and feelings of being “in love” is not returned reciprocally by the other party in question. Have you ever felt this way? I know I have, but then it got me thinking about how our Saviour feels towards us. Jesus loves us with an everlasting love and in thinking of that love, in many ways it is either reciprocated by some people or it remains unrequited by others who reject His love for them. The thing is, our Saviour’s love for us is perfect. We do not know how to love properly because we haven’t mastered Agape (God is love) Love. We tend to be conditional in our approach to love (Philia) which causes us to be needy and discontent.
Here are the 4 types of love that you should be aware of:
- Storge—empathy bond – is liking someone through the fondness of familiarity, family members or people who relate in familiar ways that have otherwise found themselves bonded by chance. An example is the natural love and affection of a parent for their child.
- Philia—friend bond -is the love between friends as close as siblings in strength and duration.
- Eros—erotic bond – love in the sense of ‘being in love’ or ‘loving’ someone, as opposed to the raw sexuality
- Agape—unconditional ‘God’ love – is the love that exists regardless of changing circumstances.
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Four_Loves
As you can see, Agape is the greatest love of all. It’s funny because the bible verse of the day on Biblegateway.com says this today:
Deuteronomy 7:9 NIV – Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.
We need to understand that Agape Love is what we should strive for as Christians. In the book of 1 Corinthians 13 (NIV) it states this:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
So why am I on this topic today? As a single person, I know what it’s like to have an unrequited love, but it got me thinking that our Saviour can empathize with this feeling because that is how He feels everyday when He tries to reach out to those that don’t know Him. Can you imagine how painful it feels to have died on a cross to save the ones you love only to be rejected even after having resurrected? My God did not die and resurrect in vain. He did all of this for one purpose, and that was to show us how much He loves us all. He is willing to wait for all eternity just to receive reciprocation of the love that He has given us from His act of devotion towards us from what He did at Calvary.
When you think of this great love, doesn’t it make you want to perfect the love you would like to give back in return? In the same way with human relationships, it hurts when you love someone and they do not reciprocate those feelings back but that is what love is. It really isn’t self-seeking because it is freely given.
Why am I talking about this today? I think that we need to become more bold in the way that we love God and others. We need to strongly emphasize our love for God through our actions. We need to take risks in our love by not expecting anything in return because that is the type of Love that Jesus gave to us. We need to demonstrate it more and more through our actions. Words can be fluff and stuff, but actions can speak more loudly than words. Sometimes we have to give love even in the face of the possibility that we might get rejected. Jesus loved us regardless of the rejection. He was more bold than anyone of us to this day. I am glad that our Lord demonstrated His love for us even in the face of rejection. Our world needs us to have the courage to demonstrate it at this level, even in the face of rejection. No one ever wants to feel rejected, but this is the path that Christ took to save us, so in the same way, we will face the same things as He did, but we need to have the courage to face what we fear in order to allow love to conquer all tribulations, setbacks and obstacles that you may face just because of Who it is that you believe in. I pray that this post blesses your spirit today. God Bless you everybody 😀
omnia vincit amor (latin for – “Love Conquers All”), Amen!
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