Love is a verb.

We like to think it’s a noun, all about feelings and giddyness and chocolate hearts or diamond rings.

It’s not.

Love is work. It’s sometimes the hardest work we’ll ever do. It’s an action. A commitment. An act of will.

It can be beautiful, wrapped up in wedding finery, or the clasped hands of an elderly couple cuddled on a hospital bed.

It can be dirty – like the sweat stained shirt of a husband tending to household chores while his wife works on a school assignment for a class she’s taking on the weekends to get the degree she never had time for; or the vomit-covered clothes of a mom who is up for 24 hours straight with her sick child.

It can be heroic – like when a middle schooler walks up the the class outcast and invites him to sit together at lunch. Or having a conversation with a homeless person instead of walking by pretending they don’t exist.

It can be quiet – like the prayers whispered over a sleeping child, or the anonymous gift left for a hurting friend.

Love is a verb.

It’s something we are called – commanded by God, actually – to DO.

Have you loved someone today?