But the greatest of these is love. 1Cor 13 :13

As I have previously mentioned, faith, hope and love are eternally linked. While faith is the fuel, hope is the engine, love is everything else. It is the vehicle in which faith and hope are transported. It, indeed, is the most powerful emotional human force.

Nothing worthwhile or memorable has ever been accomplished without it. No truer words have been uttered than,"now abideth faith hope and love, these three, but the greatest of these is love."

It has been said that God is love. Now God just is. He is unexplainable, undefinable and never completely understood. Love can never be comprehended, only demonstrated.

Hence, it always needs an object or objective of its attention. It does not exist in a vacuum. It is forever directed at a person, place, thing, mankind, the earth, ideal, principle or cause. At various times, it has been called twisted, crazy, mad, sick, an addiction and old, black magic.

It has been depicted as a rotund god with tainted arrows or a voluptuous, lustful goddess with no inhibitions. It protects all things, trusts all things, hopes all things and perseveres through all things.

"If loving you is wrong, I don't wanna be right."

"Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down."

"I regret that I have only one life to give for my country."

"Tis a far far better thing I do than I have ever done."

"Father forgive them for they know not what they do"

"If you do not forgive them, blot my name out of the book that you have written."

"Your people shall be my people, Your God my God, where you live I will live, where you die I will die, God do so to me and more if ought but death separate you and I."

All words prompted by love. Perhaps, ill-advised, unseemly, unreasonable, illogical or impractical; but, nevertheless, felt, meant, real and sincere.

All of us who are immigrants or long to enter this country, whether we know them or not, are inspired by the immortal words of Emma Lazarus. They are inscribed on the base of a statue of a lady with a torch held high in her right hand.

Give me your tired and your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,

Send these the homeless, tempest tossed to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

How many forlorn waifs and persecuted souls around the globe have responded to that invitation? How many enslaved spirits have heeded the stirring call to freedom?

Loving words, spoken or written, serve to motivate us to reach higher, dig deeper, move beyond our assumed capabilities and present circumstances, to ascend or descend to areas which are heavenly, hellish, impossible, unnatural, miraculous, divine or demonic.

The Taj Mahal, an architectural wonder, arose and was constructed as a tribute to undying love.

An Albanian nun, Mother Teresa, driven to spend her total life in the slums of Calcutta.

A Hindu lawyer, Mahatma Gandhi, dedicated his life to creating a free and independent India.

A Baptist minister, Martin Luther King, Jr., sacrificed his life for the welfare of his fellow downtrodden citizens.

An ex-prisoner and an Anglican cleric, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, labored tirelessly to ensure their country did not explode into a conflagration or war, murder and retribution.

Its power is irresistible and once its influence possesses you, you are helpless to deny its demands. It becomes a matter of for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness or in health as long as you shall live.

Therefore, beware of the dark side of the force. For it is written, "men love darkness rather than light."

Guard your heart.

Be very careful when, where and how you embrace love. It may take you places you do not want to go and keep you longer than you want to stay.

Discipline yourself and endeavor to find and remain with the one whose loving kindness for you allowed his only son to shed his blood on a cross.

Once you connect with the right side and the light side, you will find good success, you will become the head and not the tail, the windows of heaven will be opened and blessings will rain down upon you that you will not have room enough to contain them. Goodness, favor and mercy will follow and overtake you. Your life investments will reap benefits, thirty fold, sixty fold, one hundred fold -- not only here but in the life to come.

V. Knowles is a husband and father with an interest in penning issues that serve to uplift mankind. He melds his love for Classic literature, The Bible and pop culture - as sordid as it may be - into highly relatable columns of truth, faith and justice. Hence the name: Just Thinking. If he's not buried in a book or penning his next column, you may find him pinned to his sectional watching a good old Country and Western flick.