What Does It Mean to Love Someone?

by Cheryl Hollar
(Franklinton, NC, USA)

I learned a new word at church last week – it’s storge!!!! I know, it looks like a letter was left out to spell “storage,” but that’s not it. It’s the Greek word for the love between a parent and a child. Since Mother’s Day is coming up, I thought that would be a good word to use in my article. My pastor taught me that word. Actually, he taught a whole roomful of us that word at one Wednesday night Bible study.

The study was actually on the different types of love – which fits right in with my article. The three other types of love he talked about – other than storge, of course – were what we’ve always heard: agape, philios, and eros.

The last night of our study was on the eros type of love. My pastor took an unusual turn in his study when he spoke of this last type of love. He did define it to be the kind of love between a man and a woman, but he went a bit further and talked about how that kind of love fits in to the love we have for God.

We love our husbands, right? We love our boyfriends. (Hopefully, we don’t have both at the same time!) But, when we experience that love with someone we’re just crazy about, someone we would like to date or get to know, we want to be with that person. We want to know all about them. We want to hold hands. In comparing this to our relationship with God, we see how close we felt to God in the beginning and how much we enjoyed just being in His Presence. We wish that it would be that way again. And, it can!! We just have to put God first in our lives and keep Him at the center.

What I really want to speak about, though, is the kind of love that is philios – brotherly love. We should love our neighbors as ourselves. I want to focus on a project that I think is wonderful, but in which I have never participated myself. Perhaps some of you have.

It’s Habitat for Humanity. Though I don’t know anyone who has been on the receiving end of Habitat for Humanity, I do know a woman in my neighborhood who is so very grateful just for some yard work that one of our local companies and our youth did for her.

Novo is the name of the local company. Though it is international and pharmaceutical in nature, the people of this company aren’t so lost in chemistry and formulas and such that they don’t recognize and see “people” and do what they can to meet their needs.

My neighbor is one of those people. She is an elderly woman, in her eighties, and has lived in the same location for many, many years. She is the type of person who would never ask for help. In fact, she has no desire to even make any repairs on her house. Her niece lives in D.C. and has no desire ever move into the house herself. But just the thought of someone taking the time to clean up her yard and plant some flowers was so meaningful and personal to her. And she can’t stop talking about it – she can’t stop telling others how wonderful everyone is. And they keep coming back – not just to plant flowers, but to decorate her house for Christmas!

That’s going that extra mile – doing for others what they can’t do for themselves, sharing the love of God, and letting others see Jesus through us.

The youth in my church also decided to clean yards, and someone put this lady’s name on the list. She was simply overjoyed. And, as far as I know, she’s the only person who actually wrote a thank-you note to the youth director.

Since I started talking about Habitat for Humanity, I might as well add a bit more. It is simply a ministry, a ministry that fits right in with what that local business in my hometown and what the church did for my neighbor.

I went to the Habitat website and found the following: “Habitat's ministry is based on the conviction that to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ we must reflect Christ's love in our own lives by loving and caring for one another. Our love must not be words only—it must be true love, which shows itself in action. Habitat provides an opportunity for people to put their faith and love into action, bringing diverse groups of people together to make affordable housing and better communities a reality for everyone.”

I admire the founders of Habitat and went on to research a bit more about them. Their names are Millard and Linda Fuller, and when they began this ministry by literally selling all they had and giving the money to the poor. Sound familiar? Isn’t that just what Jesus asked the rich man to do? That takes a lot of courage – and even more faith.

Their giving and witnessing have touched the lives of literally millions of people worldwide. And their giving continues. I also read that Linda led in planning the Nazareth Village Project, which I had never heard of, but which apparently is a recreation of Nazareth at the time of Christ and whose project aim is to help people understand the times and teachings of Christ through something concrete. Wow.

I only want to sum this up in the words of Millard Fuller, “I see life as both a gift and a responsibility. My responsibility is to use what God has given me to help His people in need.”