Get A Haircut, Fabio!

I can’t read romance novels. I’ve tried to read them a couple of times, but frankly, they make my brain hurt. In saying this I am not putting down romance novels. Men and women are wired very differently and I, for one, am very glad that this is so. We aren’t supposed to think and feel exactly alike.

I have learned a couple of things from romance novels, however. The first thing I learned is that romance is very important to women. I used to frequent a paperback book store back in high school. I would always go to the science fiction and the western sections of the store. One day I noticed the romance section. It was bigger than the science fiction and the western sections combined. Much bigger. That tells me that romance must be a very big deal to women.

The other thing I learned was from the covers. There was this guy who was frequently pictured on the covers. I think his name was Fabio. He almost always had his shirt off. I remember looking at him and thinking, please! Get a hair cut!

But there was something about the covers of those books that I was missing. It took me a while to figure it out. Some of the artists had the ability to depict the people on those books as being in the grip of an overpowering emotion. They weren’t just in love. They were in LOVE!

That’s when I realized that someday, when I had a wife, just telling her I loved here wasn’t going to be quite enough. I would need to find someway to communicate to her that I was feeling what those people on the covers of the books were feeling. That I not only loved her, but that I needed her, and that being with her was an emotional necessity. My body can’t live without oxygen. My heart can’t breath without your love. That kind of thing.

God has created you, with not just a capacity to love, but with a capacity to LOVE! And the ultimate expression of that love is not what you feel for another human being (as wonderful as that might be), it is in the way we love God. Our love for God must grow until it becomes powerful, passionate, and the most important thing in our lives.