When I was a kid in South Carolina, I got cotton candy at the Pickens County Fair. It tasted good, was gone quickly, and I knew it didn’t give me what I needed. My grandmother’s cooking did that: green beans, tomatoes, onions, mashed potatoes and gravy, and fried chicken. That was “soul food.”
Real Love is soul food. Imitation love is cotton candy. Real Love is the love of God, unconditional love that cares about the well being of others without expecting anything in return. Real Love is grace. Imitation love is the praise, power, pleasure, and safety you try to get from other people, and it brings only temporary satisfaction and starves your soul. Real Love flows to you from God through people who have enough of it to give. They give it to you because God is Love, and you need it. If you try to earn it, you are going after imitation love. If you will give up trying to appear to deserve it and accept it just as you are, Real Love is yours.
When we desire the things that will feed our souls, we are nourished. John in his first letter says when you desire “the things in the world” you starve that part of you that can be close to God. You try to feed your soul with pleasure, the praise of people, or power over people. Those things may be sweet for a short while, but they cannot give you life. John writes, “The world and the desires it causes are disappearing. But if we obey God, we will live forever.” (1John2:17)
I see way too many people – some of them church members – who have only the desires of the world. They don’t know what Real Love is. Imitation love is all they know. God wants to give us Real Love so that we can let it flow through us to others. Let’s go after God’s love, Real Love, not the cotton candy the world gives.
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