Love
"Love Never Fails"
(1 Corinthians 13:8)
Greenledge Studios
T h i n k hard, work
soft
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Love is important to healthy growth,
stability, and the ability to fight disease.
'Man must not live by bread alone' says the Bible
(Luke 4:4). Yes, love is important to health.
Modern-day medicine has concluded that
anxiety and anger prevent well-being, but this is
a long-known fact (Proverbs 16:24; 14:30; 15:17;
15:30). Jesus even said his "food" was to do
the will of God (John 4:34), and John wrote that
"God is love" (1John 4:8; 4:16).
The first letter to the Corinthians written
by the apostle Paul contains an eloquent
description of the importance of love.
Love is the factor that ties together
the mental and physical aspects of health, because
the brain is the master regulator of the whole
body. It follows that if our thinking is
healthy, the body will do better. Many
doctors would agree that a positive attitude is a
key factor in the recovery from any health setback.
In this case, mind over matter really works.
Of course, it is also true that good
decisions promote a healthy attitude. So
important is it that we be feeling love ourselves
that Jesus said 'love your enemies' (Matthew 5:44).
One has only to look at the crime rate
and drug abuse in children raised in broken homes
to realize the impact of a loving home on the
development of young minds. If there is any
question about whether this has to do with health,
consider the many gang-related deaths in recent
years (Matthew 26:52), not to mention the
detrimental effect on health caused by poor
eating habits or substance abuse which are also
typical in these cases (John 2:19-21). That
poverty is not the root cause is amply illustrated
by the much more productive paths taken by
children in financially disadvantaged but loving
homes (Proverbs 13:20; 28:11; 28:19).
But suppose someone among us doesn't
have the benefit of loving parents or a secure
environment in which to live. God's Word
assures us that even if our own father and mother
left us we would be adopted by God (Psalm 27:10).
More than this, Jesus Christ said that there
would be no one who willingly left their
households for the sake of the good news "who will
not get a hundredfold now in this period of time,
houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and
children and fields, with persecutions, and in the
coming system of things everlasting life" (Mark 10:30).
Of course, if love doesn't suit us,
there is the alternative: hate.
More Love