What is love?
Love can’t be seen, yet it lights up everything.
Love is quiet, and love is loud,
Love slips in softly, yet it moves the crowd.
Love can hurt, and love can heal,
Love can shatter hearts, or teach them to feel.
Love can arrive like sunrise in May,
Or leave like the sunset, quietly slipping away.
Love has lost, and love has won,
It can weigh a ton, or feel like none.
Love can lift you, or let you fall,
Love can be tiny, and it can be tall.
Love is patient, and love is wild,
Love can be gentle, or untamed and riled.
Love can shine, and love can frown,
It can dress in smiles, or wear a crown of doubt.
Love can whisper, and love can roar,
It can be simple, or so much more.
Love can be a word, or love can be a ring,
Love can be nothing, or love can be everything.
So where is this thing we call love?
I search, I wonder, I reach above…
Because the truest love we ever know,
Is the love from above, the love that shows.
By Daniel Chapman
My Commentary:
This poem beautifully captures the mystery and complexity of love. Love is described as both gentle and fierce, joyful and painful, quiet and overwhelming. That is true because love is not merely an emotion. It is one of the deepest forces in human life. It shapes us, wounds us, heals us, and gives meaning to everything else.
The poem wisely recognizes that human love can be fragile. People disappoint one another. Relationships fade. Hearts break. Sometimes love arrives brightly and leaves quietly. Every person who has truly loved knows both the beauty and the vulnerability that come with it.
But the final lines lift the poem to a deeper level. After searching through all the changing forms of human love, the poet points “above.” That is profoundly Christian. Christianity teaches that the truest and most lasting love does not begin with us — it begins with God.
Scripture says, “God is love.” Not merely loving, but love itself.
Human love rises and falls because human beings are imperfect. But God’s love remains steady. It does not disappear when we fail. It does not depend upon beauty, success, or worthiness. It is patient when we wander, forgiving when we fall, and faithful even when we doubt.
That is why the human heart never stops searching. Beneath every longing for romance, friendship, family, or belonging is a deeper longing for perfect love — the kind of love only God can fully give.
And yet God’s love is not meant to remain distant or abstract. It “shows,” as the poem says. It becomes visible through kindness, sacrifice, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. Every genuine act of love on earth becomes a reflection, however imperfect, of the love that comes from above.
Perhaps that is the poem’s deepest truth:
We spend much of life searching for love, only to discover that the greatest love has been searching for us all along.
“We spend much of life searching for love, only to discover that the greatest love has been searching for us all along” — How do YOU see the reality of this in your own life?
IF YOU FIND YOURSELF A BIT IRRITATED AND OVERWHELMED, IT’S A SIGN YOU’RE SPENDING LESS TIME WITH GOD AND MORE TIME WITH THIS WORLD!
The last few years I have tossed and turned at night, worrying that we have forgotten what America is all about. I’M A DOER, NOT A TALKER. So I wrote WHAT MAKES AMERICA AMERICA.
I have 62 short Chapters that look at every aspect of life in America, from Disney World to the Baseball. Here is the link https://a.co/d/00Lyqe1C that will connect you with my Amazon page. Click READ SAMPLE and you can read the First 13 Chapters of my book for FREE. It’s a great way to celebrate America’s 250th Birthday!
