00:00The Chibi News Daily Reflection
00:04Hello, my name is Jonny Dade and I'm a vicar in the Church of England.
00:12Love, love changes everything, so goes the iconic song from Andrew Lloyd Webber, famously performed by Michael Ball.
00:21More songs have been written, more ink has been spilled, more wars have been waged because of love.
00:30Than just about anything else.
00:33But what is love?
00:36Comically, the Urban Dictionary defines love as a wildly misunderstood, although highly desirable, malfunction of the heart,
00:46which weakens the brain, causes eyes to sparkle, cheeks to glow and blood pressure to rise.
00:55Hmm, maybe.
00:58One of Jesus' dearest disciples, John, wrote extensively about love, notably God's love for us.
01:08In his gospel account, he even refers to himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved.
01:16More on that later.
01:18John exhorted Christians to love one another, for love comes from God.
01:26God, John wrote, is both the source and the definition of love.
01:33That's quite a thing to say.
01:35In fact, the Bible really challenges our modern notions of love as subjective, relative, whatever we might want it to be.
01:46But what if, to quote another song lyric, love is more than a feeling?
01:53What if love is definable, knowable even?
01:58Now that really would change everything.
02:03Now that really would change everything.
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