How much we love

Love. It's probably my favorite topic, and here is yet another blog post about it.


I think about the people in my life and how much I love them. And I was wondering today if I love everyone the same. And not just the family and friends that I have, but people I come into contact with on a daily basis. Acquaintances, people at the supermarket, librarians, my boss and coworkers. Even people I pass on the street whom I've never seen before. People I read about in the newspaper. (Okay, who am I kidding. Who reads the paper anymore? But online.)


And the reason I thought about this is because of the concept of God as love. At my church, in big letters front and center, it reads, "God is Love." These 2 concepts have lots of similarities, but the one I am thinking of is this: I don't know if I can quantify love, just as I can't quantify God. If I say I love someone, can I quantify that? Can I compare it to how much I love someone else, if love is truly God?


We all have relationships in our lives, and we give these relationships different priorities and different weights. For me, there are friends and family members whom I tend to talk with more, seek out, spend more time with, for a variety of different reasons. We have a good connection, we make each other laugh, we have common interests or activities, I may trust them more than anyone else in my life, I feel more affection towards them than towards others.


But I don't know if I love them more than I love others, because love is this universal gift that we get from God, and hopefully from those around us. But even if we don't have much human love in our lives, there is still so much love out there for us; from God, from our pets and animals, from nature. And that is love that we don't even have to work for to obtain. It is a free gift, ours if we will accept it, and even if we won't accept it. But we can embrace it if we choose.


So I guess if we look at love this way, it becomes more difficult to quantify. It's a constant, an immeasurable concept, a wonderful gift.