In its highest form

 

" ' True love'  isn't so much a dreamy feeling that you have as it is an enduring commitment to give sacrificially" (unknown)

In Campus Life  a young nurse tells of a patient called Eileen. A cerebral aneurysm had left her with no conscious control over her body. The doctors thought she was totally unconscious, unable to feel pain, unaware of anything going on around her. It was the hospital staff's job to turn her every hour to prevent bedsores, and to feed her twice a day through a stomach tube. "When it's this bad," an older nurse told her, "You have to detach yourself emotionally." As a result Eileen came to be treated as a thing, a vegetable. But the young student nurse decided to treat her differently. She talked to Eileen, sang to her, and even brought her little gifts.

 

One Thanksgiving Day she said to Eileen, "It was supposed to be my day off, but I couldn't miss seeing you on Thanksgiving. Just then the telephone rang. As the nurse turned to answer it she looked quickly back at the patient: "Eileen was looking at me,…crying. Big damp circles stained her pillow." That was the only human emotion Eileen ever showed. But it was enough to change the attitude of the entire hospital staff toward her. Not long afterward Eileen died. The young nurse closes her story by saying "I keep thinking about her,…I owe her an awful lot. Except for Eileen I might never have known what it's like to give myself to someone who can't give back."

 

Love, God's love, means giving to those who seem to have little or nothing to give back. It challenges the innate selfishness in each of us and goes against our grain. But it's love in its highest form! Love that can never be earned or lost.

"For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life".(John 3:16)