Can Love Really Conquer all?

I remember hearing the phrase, "Love conquers all", somewhere along my 48 years, but never really knew what the phrase really meant. The phrase is actually from a poem by Virgil, the Latin Poet, written in 36 B.C.E (before common era). The actual line is..."Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!" It has been a while since I did any studying of Latin or poetry, but I take the phrase to mean that all humans fall in love eventually. I'm not sure if that is right, but it got me thinking about that from a different angle. Do all humans really find love or experience love-to the point where they then show love that love to others? And if we all do love at some point, then why is there so much hate in this world? And can love conquer hate?

I do believe Love can conquer Hate...not human love with a lowercase l, but God's Love, with a capital L. I believe God's love is huge and overwhelming and fierce, but human love is small and weak most of the time. I'm not saying humans aren't capable of great love, obviously we are, but only because of God and his Love. God made us in love, and unless we are in relationship with God, our capacity to love will remain human sized. When we are in sync with God, our hearts can and do love more deeply. I heard a great song by christian artist Danny Gokey titled "Tell Your Heart to Beat Again", and it made me realize that when we accept Christ into our hearts and let him take the lead, our heart starts to beat with God's heartbeat. We can love more fully and we can view others through the lens of God's eyes.

In next week's post, I continue this thought further and ask "How can we show love to those who don't love us?".