February 17. Love Never Ends

February 17. Love Never Ends

Oudepote piptei – never ends.

Pipto means to fall down, to collapse, fall to pieces.  To perish, be destroyed, be completely ruined.  It’s quite a flexible word.

Love, however, doesn’t ever do that!  

It is hard for us to actually imagine love without end.

When my Grandma Greenwood died, I’d never again hear her say, “I love you a bushel and a peck, a bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck.” When my mother died, I knew that I would never hear her tell me “I love you” again.  When my father died twenty years later, I was never going to experience him get the last word in by saying, “I love you” again.

Love ends.  Or so it might seem.

We feel such devastation when those we love die.  It’s as if we will never be able to hear them say the words or feel their love again.  We don’t have a good concept of unending love. We have a likeness of it, but not the reality.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine a love that not only lasts a lifetime, but crosses the boundary between life and death and moves with us into eternity.

When Jesus died for us to break death’s hold on humanity, He introduced never-ending love to people who couldn’t quite grasp how it would work.  He showed us that there was something beyond the few years we live on earth.

There is a love that never ends.  There is a love that has existed since before time began and will exist into eternity – an infinite love that cannot be destroyed, will never perish and will never end.