The Difference Between Feeling Love and Growing In It

Most of us treat love as weather. It comes and goes, and when it is gone we wait for it to return. Paul treats it more like a skill. He prays that the Philippians' love will abound in knowledge and depth of insight, so that they can discern what is best. The love he has in mind can be trained.

This is good news for ordinary weeks. You do not have to wait until you feel warmly toward your coworker or your neighbor or the relative who exhausts you. You can learn them. You can pay attention to what actually helps them rather than what would feel loving to give. You can notice when a kindness is really a way of avoiding a hard conversation. Insight of this sort comes from practice, and practice comes from showing up again after you got it wrong.

A lesson for this week, then. Pick one person and ask what love with knowledge would look like toward them. Not more feeling, but more understanding. Then do the one thing the understanding suggests. Love that abounds this way is durable, because it does not depend on the weather.