7  Lessons of Love –

1 Love is kind.

Kindness has been called the small coin of love. It is not shown in large deeds so much as in countless little gentle things.

2. Love should always abound in kindnesses.

Our love should not be kept for great things, but should flow out continually, like fragrance from a flower, as part of our own life

3. Love is generous.

It “envieth not.” We have learned the lesson well only when we can rejoice in the joy of others. This is quite as much a part of true love’s sympathy as it is to share the griefs of others. “Rejoice with them that rejoice ; weep with them that weep.” We can do the latter more easily than the former. When we find one in misfortune or in trouble, it is not hard to sympathize with him. But when others are honored more than we are, or prospered more, or when they win success while we fail, or are very happy while we are less so, is it as easy for us to be genuinely glad as it would be to be really sorry if Love is unselfish. It “seeketh not its own.” Unselfishness is at the very heart of all true love. It is the obtruding of self into our thoughts, feelings, and acts that spoils much of our living. We love people until it would cost us something to continue to love them and then we stop short. We accept serious responsibility when we say to anyone: “I will be your friend.” That is what Jesus said to his friends, and then he loved to the uttermost. That is what “seeketh not its own” means. It may cost us years of self-denial and exhausting service.

4. Love keeps sweet amid all irritation.

It “is not provoked.” It probably is too much to hope for in this world of infirmity and sinfulness, that one shall ever attain a condition in life in which there shall be nothing that would naturally excite bitter or unkindly feeling. Indeed, we could not learn to be sweet-tempered with nothing to test and exercise our Temper.

5. Good temper is an admirable quality of love.

For some people it is easier, too, than for others. But it is part of the lesson of love which we should all set ourselves to learn, whether it is easy or hard. It can be learned, too — it should be learned, Love is meek. It does not keep a list of slights, of- fences and injustices. It does not keep a list of slights, of- fences and injustices.

6. Let your love be simply inexhaustible.

Nothing is harder than to have to endure wrong and ingratitude, to love and to have love unrequited. It is not easy to keep on loving when this is one’s experience.

7. This is a secret which all of us should seek to learn.

It is easy to let bitterness creep into the heart when one has to endure wrong day after day, week after week, possibly year after year. There are women who know what this means. There are men, too, who meet this experience. Too often the darkness creeps into their souls and puts out the lights of love.

Sometimes one finds a sweet fresh-water spring beside the sea. When the tide is low you may take your cup and drink of the pure well and the water is fresh as if it flowed from the bosom of a rock on the hillside. Then the sea rolls over it and for long hours the brackish floods bury the little spring out of sight. But when the tide draws back again, you find the water sweet as ever. So love should be in our hearts when the black, brackish floods of wrong have swept over them. The love should never lose its sweetness.

Another quality of love to be learned is seeing the good and not the evil in others.

We are not to put on our strongest glasses in order to look at others and see the flaws and faults in them. Rather we should turn our glasses on ourselves, to find our own defects, while we try to discover the good there is in our neighbor. It is amazing how some people are worried over other people’s defects and sins and how little concern meanwhile the un- seemly things in themselves give them.

It looks for the good in others and seeks to woo it out into something better. If only we would learn this lesson and think of finding the good in others, instead of the evil, covering all unlovely things, hoping all beautiful things, how changed all life would be ! How much nearer together we should be drawn if only we saw each other more clearly, more truly