True Love

 True love is a process.  True love requires personal action. Love must be continuing to be real. Love takes time. Too often expediency, infatuation, stimulation, persuasion, or lust are mistaken for love. How hollow, how empty if our love is no deeper than the arousal of momentary feeling or the expression in words of what is no more lasting than the time it takes to speak them.

 We must at regular and appropriate intervals speak and reassure others of our love and the long time it takes to prove it by our actions. Real love does take time. Love demands action if it is to be continuing. Love is a process. Love is not a declaration. Love is not an announcement. Love is not a passing fancy. Love is not an expediency. Love is not a convenience.

 Marvin J Ashton "Love Takes Time"  General Conference October 1975

Love of the very essence of life. It is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet it more than the end of the rainbow. Love at the beginning also, and from it springs the beauty that arches across the sky on a stormy day. Love is the security for which children weep, the desire of youth, the cement that binds marriage, and the smoothing oil that prevents devastating friction in the home; it is the peace of old age, the sunlight of hope shining through death. How rich are those who enjoy it in their associations with family, friends, church, and neighbors.

I am one who believes that love, like faith, is a gift of God. I agree with the expression, Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased."  

 Gordon B. Hinckley "And the Greatest of These Is Love" BYU Devotional February 14, 1978