Alive - by Dave Smith

singing of the final hymn, I became aware of the loving presence of
God right there with me, inviting me to open my life to him. Then,
after several months of an internal battle, I finally surrendered,
prayed a prayer and invited the risen Jesus Christ to come into my
life by his Spirit. Immediately I felt like I’d come truly alive, for the first
time in my life, and experienced a new sense of peace, joy and of
being deeply and unconditionally loved.
Your story will be different to mine, but one thing we have in
common is that we all need to know and experience ‘real’ love.
Drawing on recent research, psychologist Barbara Frederickson
writes: ‘What you long for is love. Whether you’re single or not,
whether you spend your days largely in isolation or steadily
surrounded by the buzz of conversation, love is the nutrient that your
cells crave: true positivity-charged connection with other living
beings...Love…not only feels great but is also life-giving, an
indispensable source of energy, sustenance, and health.’ 1 Put simply,
love is the first characteristic we need to be and feel fully alive.
The question is, what kind of love? This is where our English word
for ‘love’ has its limitations. So, when I say, ‘I love golf’ it’s not on the
same level as saying to one of our girls, ‘I love you and am so thrilled
that you are my daughter.’ There’s a difference, too, between
romantic love, the comradeship and accepting love of friends and the
self-sacrificing love of a stranger to someone in need. Put simply, we
need more words for love than we have at our disposal. It’s been
said that the Arctic peoples have ‘fifty-two names for snow because it
was important to them: there ought to be as many for love’. 2
One of the languages that contains a more sophisticated vocabulary
for love is ancient Greek, the language in which the New Testament
was written. 3 So, for example, the Greek word ‘eros’ was primarily