john on Romantic Love

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.

There is the great lesson of “Beauty and the Beast”; that a thing must be loved before it is loveable.

Once, while on vacation, on our way to church, Terri and I got into a disagreement over something. When I felt I was losing, to make my point, I stopped the car and got out. We were on a country road....

You shall love your crooked neighbor with all your crooked heart.

We should always remember that love is the highest gift of God. All of our revelations and gifts are little things compared to love.... Settle in your heart that from this moment on you will aim at no...

Love is life. All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is, everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it alone.

When one has once fully entered the realm of Love, the world—no matter how imperfect—becomes rich and beautiful, it consists solely of opportunities for Love.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

“And in the end, we were all just humans.. drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.”

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

For though [something] be good, it may be loved with an evil as well as with a good love: it is loved rightly when it is loved ordinately; evilly, when inordinately.

For the beauty of human love Brother, sister, parent, child. Friends on earth and friends above, For all gentle thoughts and mild; Lord of all, to thee we raise, This, our hymn of grateful praise...

Emerson once observed, Do you love me? actually means Do you see the same truth? Or at least . . . Do you care about the same truth?”

Imagine making the shape of a valentine heart with your hands and holding it up to your face. That’s the posture of seeing with compassion. You might picture yourself looking through the heart at a pe...

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...

The basis of life is people and how they relate to each other. Our success, fulfillment, and happiness depend upon our ability to relate effectively. The best way to become a person that others are dr...

Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly. We need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. That is th...

Is life not full of opportunities for learning love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. A...

People often think of Narcissus as the symbol of excessive self-regard, but in fact, he exemplifies the opposite. As the Renaissance philosopher Marsilio Ficino observed in the 1500s, Narcissus did no...

Blessed be the tie that binds Our hearts in Christian love; The fellowship of kindred minds Is like to that above. Before the throne of God We pour our impassioned prayers; Our fears, our hopes, ...

Let me tell you the story of a great missionary named Frank C. Laubach (1884–1970). He grew up in the farming community of Benton, PA, and served as a Congregationalist missionary in the Philippines. ...

The Christian's new life is a life of love, forgiveness, and kindness, modeled after the example of Christ.

My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms.

[Humility is] to become like Jesus in his willingness to choose the hidden way of love rather than the way of power.

The Lord our God is rich in mercy, slow to anger, and abounds in steadfast love. He does not pay us back what we deserve, but even while we were his enemies he sent his son to die for us. Christ died ...

When my kids were little, I used to hang piñatas from our favorite tree in the backyard as often as possible. Sometimes we did it for their birthdays, but sometimes we did it because it was Saturday, ...

I am persuaded that love and humility are the highest attainments in the school of Christ and the brightest evidences that He is indeed our Master.

We bring before God those times when God’s Kingdom and love have not shaped our lives, asking to be forgiven and made new. Lord Jesus, too often this week you have only been a small part of our live...

O Lord, We marvel that you would take on flesh and blood in order to be crucified, killed, and buried for us. You humbled yourself and submitted to the hatred of sinful men, accepting the thorns, the ...

Gracious God, we come before you with humility, recognizing that doubt has led our decisions. We have allowed fear to lead, rather than love. Because of this, we have been unkind to our families, our ...