Because Love Is Not a Walk in the Park...

 When love is 'performed' out of sheer Duty

It is a thorn void of joy's Beauty

The cost of love can drain the glove where pleasure’s prize is pain

Yet love keeps no account of wrongs but simply loves again

The way we are can scar the best of good intention, oh

With proof that we all need Love’s blood-bought grace whereby we go

…and remind us how much we owed but Love braved and forgave

To free us from the clutches of a long and hellish grave

Oh God, failure would be a weight that drives us to despair

For Thought can play tricks to enslave us to dread’s gloomy lair

But Thou, Creator God, art greater than torment of fear

Your Hope in all love’s heartache is an anchor for its tear

Where agony of sorrow, when love seems to fail somehow

Is healed a little as we reach to touch Thy thorn-pierced brow

Ah, Love; sometimes the masquerade of loud and flashy frauds

Seduces us to lust after the glut of lesser gods

But there is only One through Whom Love was, is and will be

And God will prove in time enough, His authenticity

For He is Love, and all who love (His face hid by Time’s veil)

Bear witness to kind proof of He whose Law will never fail

Therefore, no matter what may lie before us (or behind)

Love soothes the soul with mercies everlasting, ever kind

Where all that we encounter is an opportunity

To place our bodies on the altar of humility

And offer Self as living sacrifice to He who gave

Himself in perfect love to free us from hate’s hellish grave

‘There is no fear in love’ oh God, drive out the foe of thee

Who seeks to lure us from the comfort of Love’s Surety

And screams bold accusations to we, all broken at best

(For trial is not hate from God but ‘love put to the test’)

Where we could be persuaded to believe the devil’s lies

And be intimidated by The Vile Accuser’s cries

…but for the holy confidence in love of God alone

Where cost of love can drain the needy glove of flesh and bone

But never can annul the miracle performed within

Where Love redeemed the convict and forgave us every sin

And broke the chains that Hope maintains until that Solemn Day

When love, God’s love at last will have the perfect, final say

© Janet Martin

and a good read here on love' Love is not whatever you want it to be...

 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, 

God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

 1 John 4:12