Love is .....

About a month ago I saw a message on Facebook from a “For sale and wanted in Swindon” group. The message told the story of a couple – Will & Hayley - who were looking for help to plan a wedding. Originally Hayley posted a message on Facebook asking if anyone had a wedding dress for sale. She wanted her dad to be able to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day. Her dad is gravely ill so Hayley knew she had to act quickly.

Little did Hayley realise the response she would get off the back of that message. As Hayley said in the interview with the Swindon Advertiser last week, she received over 200 offers of help. That means there are a lot of good people in Swindon. In fact that is an understatement. There are a lot of people in Swindon with love in their hearts.

I am honoured to be one of the 200 as I offered the use of St Andrews Methodist Church and my services as a minister if the couple wanted a church wedding. Which they did.

All in all her dress, the church, the cake and suit hire have all been offered for free, and transport has been arranged by a taxi firm.

The English language is quite amazing and it is always changing, with new words being added. 5 years ago who had heard the word “selfie” for example, but we all know what a selfie is now. But despite being a wonderful language it has its limitations. For example in English we only have one word for love, “love” whereas there are many different kinds of love.

For example there is a difference between saying “I love Swindon Town” and then saying to another person “I love you”. In other words when we talk of love, we can mean the love of a partner, love of a parent towards a child or love of a child towards a parent; we can mean a deep friendship or "liking" for a person or thing; or we can mean romantic love. But we only have the one word.

The Greek language on the other hand has four different words which we would translate as love. The four words are Eros, Phileo, Agape and Storge.

Storge – affection. Affection is fondness through familiarity (a brotherly love), especially between family members.

Philia – friendship. Philia love is the love between friends. Friendship is the strong bond existing between people who share common interest or activity

Eros – romance. Eros love in the sense of 'being in love' or 'loving' someone,

Agape – unconditional love. Agape is the love that brings forth caring regardless of the circumstance.

St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians was originally written in Greek and it is part of a letter sent to people living in a Greek city – Corinth. And in the famous 13th chapter – in which Paul talks of love - Paul used the word Agape because he wanted the people at the church in Corinth to be more caring towards one another. But I think 1 Corinthians 13 covers all the kinds of love I’ve mentioned.

The wedding today was full of love. There was the Eros romantic love between Will and Hayley.

There was the Storge love, the family love between Hayley and her Dad and the rest of the family.

There was the Philia love, the friendship love shown to Will and Hayley by their closest friends.

And finally there was the Agape love shown by the many people who have set out to help Hayley and Will have their marriage.

Will and Hayley I hope that all the love shown to you today will be a good foundation for your marriage. And I pray that you will have a long and happy marriage together. And may your life together be surrounded by God’s love now and forevermore.

Photos taken by Ian Plested of Redhouse Photograhpy