Analogy of Love and Relationship

“The world  is a grocery store…”

By: Ellyn Rose B. Alarcio

“Getting into a relationship is like going to a grocery store to buy the ingredients you need for a perfect menu you want to prepare for dinner. You have a list, and a budget. The list is God’s guide on the kind of person and relationship He wants us to be with and get into, and the budget represents our lives. The world  is a grocery store. As you look for the things that you NEED, you will be enticed by other UNNECESSARY things and you will be tempted to buy them even if it’s not on your list, thus, you will have to decide: buy those things you DON’T NEED before the ones on the list and mess up with your budget, or stick to the list, be sad a little, but go home with all you’re ingredients completed and with contentment?”

          Today, whether teenagers, young adults, or adults – everyone becomes interested when hearing or reading anything about love. Do you? Well, maybe because most of us have gone through the process of waiting, loving, forgiving, hurting, coping, and moving on. But has it ever crossed your mind: what if I have listened to my Mom? What if I took my bestfriend’s advice? What if I did not hastily got into that relationship because I was just attracted? What if I listened to God’s words?

                God’s words in I Corinthians 13:4 say, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” God has already given us the idea about what true love is. All we need to do is “be patient and wait for Him (Ps. 37:7)” and and His plans which can only be good for us (Jeremiah 29:11). God does not want us to live a life in  pain and with so many regrets, so He guides us through our parents, sometimes thru our relatives and at times thru our closest friends. But it saddens me to say that most of us get too excited to experience the beauty of this thing so-called LOVE that we jump into things which eventually will make us regret, causing our hurts to get wounded and get scarred. But what’s worse is, we think that we are only able to cope up when we have someone beside us – as in a relationship with the opposite sex; for some of us we think that this is the only escape from the pain. Well let me tell you the truth: IT IS ONLY GOING TO MAKE THINGS WORSE. The more we get ourselves involve in an intimate relationship with one of the two having wrong motives, we’ll only damage our hearts further.

            So, I suggest, let’s all go back to the basics. Let’s know first what we really NEED in our lives: a lover, a husband, a father/mother to our children – or a PARTNER more than anything else, who was custom-molded by God’s own hands to fit our personality and has been given the capability to accept us and love us for who we are, support us when we feel like backing down, and will be with us through sunny or stormy day?  Then, pray and wait… PATIENTLY.