This Thing Called Love 
Jimmy McCarty 


Recently I was asked a couple of questions that brought a deep insight to me. As part of my class entitled Vocational Discernment and Spiritual Formation I was asked to reflect on these two questions:
When in your life have you most known love?
When in your life have you least known love?
I meditated over these questions. I looked over my life, and an amazing pattern developed. I discovered that the times I was looking to be loved were the times I found love to be most absent, and the times when I was loving, giving love away as fast as I could, were the times I found love to be most present.
It is in the act of loving that I have been most in the presence of love. It has been when I have given love away that I have received it. It is when I am not seeking it, but showing it, that I have found it.
It has been when I have sought it that it has been absent. It is when I have been focused on myself, my own needs, my own desires that I have lost it. 
When I brought this truth to my small group a silence fell over the group. And then, one by one, people began to say that as they looked over their lives they noticed the same pattern. It was not only true for me, but for everyone there.
Love is a strange thing. We all want it. We all need it. And yet, when we look for it, it's nowhere to be found. And when we do it, it's everywhere. When we give love we receive it. When we try to hold it we lose it. It is the paradox of life. It is the paradox of love.
I have asked myself at numerous points in my life, "Love…where are you?" "Why can't I find love?" "Why doesn't so and so love me?" Etc. etc. etc.
Love has always been there. It's just been inside of me, and the only way I can see it is to let it out.
I have seen love when I have fed the hungry.
I have seen love when I have taught a class.
I have seen love when I have played with orphans.
I have seen love when I have preached a sermon.
I have seen love when I have bathed the sick.
I have seen love when I have served my wife.
I have seen love in every place where I least expect it. 
I have found that if you want to find love you first have to give it away. You first have to do it. Love isn't found. Love is made. God is love. God is on a cross. Love is on a cross. Love is found in the ultimate giving away. It is not kept by holding onto it. It is kept by letting it go. 
Where have you known love in your life?