Love Is Verb...

"Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything"...a section of I Corinthians 13.

About once a year my kids and I catch the original version of Yours, Mine and Ours, we did again over this Thanksgiving holiday. This movie was made in the 60's with Lucy Arnez and Henry Fonda and is based on a true story of two widowers who had large families. Lucy was apparently quite powerful then, her name shows first on the credits and her own studio bought the rights to the movie. She was feeling that people needed a good family movie since at the time there was so much focus on sex in other pictures. It was this movie that paved the way for the success of the Brady Bunch.

There is one scene that for years has resonated with me and always makes a strange lump appear in my throat when it arrives. If you haven't seen it here's the set-up. Both of these parents of large families are widowed and decide to marry. They conceive a baby together and on the night of the baby's arrival Mr. Beardsley is awakened. As he hurrily prepares to take Mrs. Beardsley to the hospital to deliver the baby he finds his teenage daughters' boyfriend fist-fighting with his teenage son. Apparently the boyfriend was mocking Beardsley's daughter because she wouldn't do whatever he was wanting late that night and he was frustrated, thinking her a prude. Now enjoy the scene and his talk about what love really is...

Yours, Mine & Ours Scene...


I've often questioned myself, based on I Corinthians and the above clip, if I even loved my wife when we first got married. Since what I now understand to be real love, is nothing close what I understood 20 1/2 years ago.

What I have come to understand just a little, is; that to really love we must accept the paradox, "die to live".

Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. (Luke 9:23 NIV)

"Husbands, go all out in your love for your wives, exactly as Christ did for the church - a love marked by giving, not getting". (Ephesians 5:25 The Message)

More later...