Love – Page 2 – Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

It’s in his kiss

August 20, 2025

Kissing in different cultures means varied things. There are also different types of kisses. On the cheek, the hand, the lips, or even the ear or back of the neck. Kissing in our culture is considered romantic. European, Middle Eastern, and other cultures greet friends and acquaintances with a kiss or two on the cheek.

Handshaking is the American method of greeting in most of our communities. As a Christian and a Baptist, I am very familiar with this process. We often modify the standard handshake. You and your friends or family may have a secret or non-secret way to greet each other. Organizations can have variations on the common greeting.

I want to talk about the romantic type of kiss. One of my favorite subjects for situation comedies. You take a prepubescent girl and a boy of a similar age, and a story of the desire for a first kiss and a distaste for the opposite sex. The variations are innumerable. Almost every TV show has had an episode based on this situation.

We all know that movies often feature storylines about kisses. Romantic comedies almost always require kissing between the two leads. Often, there is this kind of action between those who do not believe they are in love. I can think of many films where young people and sometimes older characters find kissing many others a fun thing to do.

Jewelry companies want us to think that their products will get us kissed. That has not been my experience. I can’t talk a lot about the subject of kissing multiple partners. I kissed two or three other girls before I started dating Cindy. When I began kissing her, I enjoyed it very much.

I think she also enjoyed it. She didn’t like it when I tried to kiss her with other people around. When I kissed her goodnight after a date, she never refused or acted like she did not enjoy it. As our relationship continued, so did my desire to hold her and kiss her even more.

As with most couples, we no longer spend time just holding each other and kissing as we did early in our marriage. Hugging and kissing are still part of our life together. It isn’t as large a part as it was in the early years. Three children, twelve grandchildren, and all of life’s time constraints take a toll.

Intimacy is still important. It is necessary for a strong relationship. It is a form of communication for us. We sleep in the same bed. Share a house and many other things. Our fiftieth anniversary is a year away, and I still enjoy being with her as much as I ever have.

I hope that your marriage is going well, also. A kiss is not the best way to tell if you are loved. Paul gives us a list of things that we should use to indicate if someone loves us. Patience and kindness are two of them. Work on kissing, hugging, kindness, and patience, and I think you will go a long way.

The Book of Love

May 29, 2025

In 1957 the song “Who Wrote the Book of Love?” came out. As a youngster, I did not understand what love was and the actual meaning that question held. Is there a book of love and if so, who is the author? As a writer, authorship is of personal importance. I have learned that the Book of Love is also known as the Bible. It has many authors and many of the Bible books speak of love.

Let’s take the book of Genesis first. Jehovah created the universe. He also made men and women, the Hebrew Nation, and the freewill He gave them caused a lot of trouble for humanity. He showed His love for us by giving us a second chance. Even if you do not believe in a worldwide flood, I hope you can see that exterminating almost all the people on the planet was an act of love.

The next four books finish out what is referred to as The Law. It can be difficult to understand why a loving God would create these rules that many believe spoil their fun. The Law is Yahweh’s love letter to humanity. We rejected His love when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

You and I had no choice at that time. Today, we do have the opportunity to say yes or no to Jesus. He showed His love to us by giving His life to renew the relationship that was lost in the garden. The Law was put in place to show us that we had missed the mark. That is what sin is. Being unable to accomplish what we need to do is a failure.

The books of history from Joshua through Esther tell how Jehovah kept trying to convince the Israelites and Gentiles of God’s love. God guides the Hebrews to take the land He has given them. Killing those who oppose God’s law may not seem like love to you. Jehovah wants the Children of Israel to learn who He is and who He can be to them. Israel as a nation needed to give Yahweh a place to be born and teach us what He wants to do for us.

Poetry like Job and Psalms tell us about love. God’s love is shown to Job by not allowing Satan to destroy him and giving him a new life as we can have through Christ. Look at Psalm 8, 23, or 119. These are love songs from David and others to God. The 119^th Psalm declares the writer’s love for the law, word, and statutes of our Lord.

Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are books of wisdom from Solomon and David. The love of a father is expressed throughout the proverbs and is seen in the frustration of the preacher and his realization that the only thing that we can believe in is Jehovah and His promises.

The greatest love story in the Bible is in the Song of Solomon. The King of Israel declares his love for an unidentified woman. As a teenager, I found the use of certain terms such as breasts to be sexual. They are but God created them and sex. The language describes the sexual desire of a man for a woman. This can be an expression of love.

Both the major and the minor prophets show the love that Jehovah has for the Hebrews as well as all the people of the world. These books predict the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus and identify Him as the son of God and heir to David’s throne for eternity. What more can love be, than that God would become a man and die for us.

The gospels and the book of Acts show us Jesus’ love for humanity and how the plan of salvation through his death and resurrection brings us to new life through Him. His words of love for mankind and His promises to get us into His presence speak volumes.

The New Testament letters all point us to the fact that our only hope is accepting the salvation that Christ brought us. These were written by several men who Knew Jesus both as a man on this earth and as their Savior and Lord after His resurrection.

Revelation is the final statement of God to His followers. He wants us to know that we will win the battle with Satan. We don’t know when this war between Jehovah’s goodness and the rejection of Him which is evil, began. It will end in time at some point in our future. Much of this book is a mystery.

Symbolism is rampant here. The love of Christ which is the love of God is shown in those who love Him coming to be in His presence and those who reject Him will spend an eternity separated from the one they would not even acknowledge existed. Which are you?

Every kiss begins with . . .

May 28, 2025

No, it isn’t Kay or Hallmark. It is with desire. When my wife and I watch rom-coms I have a saying, “It’s a Hallmark.” Most Hallmark movies have the starring couple kissing in the last five to fifteen minutes. Others like Larry Levinson productions have lovers kissing much earlier.

My wife and I kissed for the first time after our first or second date. I can’t remember exactly. I think it was the first time. It might not have been. I know I wanted to kiss her every time I saw her and I still do. This was the start of love.

Remember that I do not believe love and lust are the same. Lust is a kind of desire. Love prompts desires of its own. These are not the same. Love makes you want to be with someone. Not for sex or any of that superficial stuff. You want to spend your life with them.

We have been together for over fifty years. Today is our forty-ninth anniversary. We are both retired now and spend almost every moment together. We don’t have to be together all the time; we just enjoy each other’s company. We share the chores around the house, run errands together most of the time, and still sleep in the same bed.

We both have sleep apnea which means without our CPAP machines we snore. During the first year we dated I spent ten weeks over a thousand miles away for the summer. When I returned home, I had turned twenty-one and decided that we needed to be married as soon as possible after I graduated from college the next spring.

Two weeks after the wedding My job moved us to another city, and this gave me justification for marrying her before she graduated from high school. She completed school in the new community and found a job after she was out of school.

Many people think that if you get married at a young age it will be difficult to stay together. For us that has not been a problem. We have learned that the key to loving each other is forgiveness. Everyone has disagreements and makes mistakes. Don’t let these problems break up your relationships.

What we need to do is watch what we say to each other and forgive when we have differences in opinions. Another requirement is to make compromises. When our first daughter was born Cindy wanted to start a tradition of talking about Santa Claus with our daughter. I disagree with that idea.

I felt that promoting this kind of falsehood in our children’s lives would make them distrust what we told them about Jesus and God. She wanted them to be given the fun things these fantasies could bring. It turned out that we were able to explain the differences between real and pretend at the appropriate ages with each of them. Love sometimes is a compromise.

I think I’m in love.

May 5, 2025

In college, this was a saying that many guys my age used. One of my friends or acquaintances would say this when we say a beautiful girl or woman walks by. A friend of mine at Southwest Baptist College in Bolivar, MO, changed that slightly. He was a ministerial student like me. He changed it to “I think I’m in lust.”

There is a difference between love and lust. Let me define the two words. Love is not an emotion. Lust is a desire for something sexual. I do not like to use dictionaries for words like love. Secular scholars are more interested in contemporary usages of the word and not what the Biblical examples indicate.

I agree with Paul’s definition of the love of God. You’ve read it in First Corinthians chapter 13. It includes patience, kindness, lack of envy, boasting, and pride. This is what we should strive for in our romantic love.

Do you know how to define what you mean when you say “I love you” to your spouse? The Association referred to it as “Cherish” in the song in 1966. “Cherish is the word I use to describe all the feelings that I have” is the opening line. This song also tells us that all the other guys say, “I love you.”

All they want is to touch your face, your hands, or hold you. Others say they will love you all the rest of their lives. When I was dating the girls were warned not to believe us when we said that we loved them. Most of these guys would use the line, “If you really love me, we should have sex.”

I never was one to do that. I had one girlfriend that I learned later and she stopped dating me because I never tried to have sex with her. Cindy will tell you that I haven’t had that problem for a long time.

On television and in movies, young people ask their parents or other adults how you know if you love someone. For me, it was because I wanted to be with her. Not every minute of every day like the songs say. When we are apart, I need to get back to her. I hope you have someone that gives you that kind of security.

This is not sexual. That is why I say that sex is not the same as love. I do not like to use the term making love. That makes love a noun, not a verb. Love is something you do. As Paul says, “It is patient, it is kind, it never fails.”

I explain to those who say that they fell in love and have fallen out of love by adding I did not fall. I jumped in. I can leave if I do not want to continue to love. I have a choice to love or not. It is the same for you. Jump or stay where you are.

Love is a choice as the book title says. It is up to you. Like Doc Brown said at the end of the third installment of the Back to the Future Trilogy, “Your future isn’t set. Make it what you want it to be.”

A month of love

February 7, 2025

February is called the month of love due to the fourteenth. In past years, I have written an annual Valentine’s Day column. I have decided to spend this month posting as many pieces about love as I can. Let’s begin by talking about what most people think love is.

Ask a dozen people what love is, and you will receive four or five answers like, “a warm hug,” “a puppy,” or my favorite “how you feel about someone.” In my opinion, love is a verb. It is an action. You show love by doing something for someone.

Examples are cooking dinner, doing chores they dislike, and taking them somewhere you do not want to go without telling them you don’t want to go there. Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Try it. They’ll like it.

When you love someone, you will be a servant to them. You will do what they need you to do without them having to ask. We usually have two problems in this area. We want them to do things for us that we don’t tell them about. We try to do things for them that they want to do themselves.

I don’t like to clean or do laundry. If you want to be of service to me, come do those. You might want to cook me a meal. That would be fine from time to time. If you truly love me, let me do the cooking. You should help with the things I do not want to do.

Do you understand this? When my wife was a stay-at-home mom, she cooked, cleaned, took care of the kids, and all the other things that a home needs to do. On my weekend off I cooked and helped with everything else. She mowed the yard for me and ran errands I had no time to take care of. We serve each other.

I did not ask her to do all the “woman’s work” because of my love for her. She did not require me to complete all the “man’s work” as well as working 40+ hours a week. We are also DIYers. I know what Labor Day means because most of these holidays were spent working on our home.

We refinished three rooms of oak flooring. Ripping out carpet and painting walls and ceilings. Then we tore up our bedroom, hung sheetrock, painted it, and installed new trim. Before we sold that house, we remodeled the kitchen and dining room which involved installing and finishing two more oak floors. The only room we did not touch was the family room.

We’ve been here for twenty years now. This house needed no work when we moved in. In the years we have been here we’ve painted, laid new carpeting, replaced kitchen backsplash, and other items. Life and love are work. Don’t believe people who tell you they are not.

Love is being there for the person you say you love. It is the ups and downs of the relationship. It is the commitment that you keep to each other. It is refusing to allow anyone or anything to come between you. Love is a verb.

The summer of 1975

January 26, 2025

In 1975 I traveled farther than I had ever gone. I rode a Continental Trail Ways Bus from Springfield, MO to Harrisburg, PA. I left Missouri on a bright morning and by the next afternoon had checked into a hotel with over a hundred college and high school students from all over the United States. We were there for orientation to the Student Summer Mission Program of the Home Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Leaving home wasn’t that hard. I spent the last semester of school in a dormitory on campus in Bolivar. That is about thirty miles north of my home. Ron, my roommate, and I got along well, and we both went home every weekend. He went to Waynesville and I to Springfield. He had transferred to Southwest Baptist College that year as a junior from the University of Missouri, Rolla campus. I did the same thing from Southwest Missouri State University. He was a mechanical engineering student, and my major was creative writing. I was going to go to the University of Missouri at Columbia before God called me to the ministry. Ron’s plans were changed by God, also, before we met.

During the first week of my first semester, I saw signs around campus promoting the Summer Missionary Program. I filled out the paperwork and applied. We would find out if we had been accepted after the new year.

That year, I met many new people, not all of them at college. I went to church one Wednesday evening for dinner and joined a youth excursion to a haunted house. At church, I met a cute little high school girl. As we waited in line at the haunted house, we began holding hands, and I made myself available to comfort her when she was frightened.

I failed to ask for her phone number that night. I later asked the girl she had attended with for her number, and we began dating. When I received my acceptance for the summer and learned I would be going to PA I wondered about leaving her for ten weeks.

When I left in June 1975, we were engaged. We wrote letters—yes, I know that is old-fashioned—and spoke on the phone. I missed her terribly. I returned in August; I had decided that by next summer, we would be married. I was graduating in the spring and did not know if I would be going to seminary or where God would take me.

I took a part-time job in February of 1976 and was offered a full-time management trainee position two weeks before graduation. Two weeks after our wedding I was told they needed me to move to Joplin, Missouri. Cindy was still in high school. I left for Joplin on a Sunday evening and stayed in a hotel. She joined me on Friday after she quit her summer job.

I was so glad to have her in my arms again. She graduated in December, and we returned to Springfield in August of 1977. Over the years I have been asked why we did not wait until she finished school to be married. My answer is simple. I did not want to be away from her like I had been the previous summer.

I did not know that God intended me to move so close to home. I thought I might be going hundreds of miles away again. I had considered Dallas, TX, Kansas City, or even California for Seminary. That was not God’s plan. I did not need a master’s or doctorate. I needed to learn to be a workplace minister.

The question is sometimes asked by teenagers, “How do you know when you are in love?” For me, I knew that summer. I never wanted to be away from her again. I’ve gone on short mission trips of about a week. I’ve traveled for training and my job. Ten days was the longest we have been apart in fifty years.

Shortly after I accepted the call to full-time Christian service, my pastor told me to carefully select the woman I would marry. When I transferred to SWBC (Southwest Bridal College), I dated several girls. I prayed for each one. Was she the one I should marry? I do not believe I ever asked God about Cindy. I knew I had to spend my life with her.

If you are looking at major changes in your life this year, graduating, moving, or changing jobs, be sure that you are seeking the Lord’s will. Nineteen Seventy-Four was a pivotal year for me. God told me He wanted my life, and I gave it to Hum. Is this the year you should do the same?

I know I need to be in love

February 10, 2023

I was supposed to be a girl. I had two older brothers. My dad wanted a girl. He wanted both of my brothers to be girls. I wore girls’ baby dresses for the first six months of my life. Mom had all these clothes that she never put on my brothers. It was my responsibility to use them.

She taught me to sew, crochet, and cook. This is the reason I have been an advocate of women’s rights and breaking gender barriers. Our daughters had toy cars. They played with boys’ toys. We gave our oldest astronaut Barbie. I taught her to love science and space and built a spaceship for her doll.

Our youngest daughter worked with me in my shop. She liked the drill press and the saw. She is a handywoman today. Our middle daughter will try anything you tell her that she can’t do. Isn’t this usually a male response?

My first girlfriend was when I was in second grade. I do not remember her name. I dated only one girl through high school. During my sophomore year in college, she announced to me that she did not think we should see each other anymore. I was all right with that. From that point, I dated a few ladies.

I wanted to find someone to love. I just needed to pick the correct one. I accepted a call to the full-time gospel ministry, changed colleges, and met my future wife the following year.

At that time, I did not know as much about love as I do today. I know that love is a verb. It is not an emotion. It is a choice. You decide who you will love and if that love will last. We do not fall in love or out of it. We stop caring about those we once cherished because of several factors. One of these is that we all change.

In marriage, we should be changing together. Growing apart needs to be recognized and avoided. We need to learn to communicate our needs, wants, and love better. The books “Five Love Languages” and “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus” are two volumes that discuss the differences in the way we communicate.

Gary Chapman identifies five separate ways of speaking. Not all of these are verbal. Men and women can share these. Some couples accidentally know what the other means because they speak the same dialect.

John Gray separates the miscommunication between men and women into differences in culture. He also believes that once we learn this, we can have meaningful dialogue. Both men are correct as are hundreds of others that have written books or taught marriage seminars.

I knew I needed to be in love. The Carpenters song adds that believing there is someone for me was hard. One of the steps I learned from Karen was that it wasn’t simple and that freedom made it more difficult. I am not perfect, and neither is Cindy.

We married because we wanted to work at loving each other. We still understand that it is for life. That life is not easy. We work at it every day. She has changed. I am not the same man she loved at first. Good intentions were a foundation. That was not where we placed our faith.

I believe that she loves me. I know her love language. I know that as a woman she cannot always understand what I try to say. I say I want to be with her. I prove it by being with her. When I put business ahead of us, she told me about it. She had the patience to let me learn the lessons at my own pace. Sometimes I can be a slow learner.

Our love has grown. It is not what it was forty-seven years ago. We are still together and love each other. Do not stop growing in your relationships. Have the courage to work hard on it. Do not miss the opportunity to say I love you. And use all five languages when you need to. Happy Valentine’s Day.

Boy Named Sue

January 26, 2023

This morning on the radio there was a discussion about a man who suggested a technique for disciplining children during the period leading up to Christmas. He said to wrap gifts and put them under the tree early. When a child disobeys, take one and throw it into your fireplace.

The conversation turned to how traumatic this would be for the kids. One caller suggested using positive reinforcement instead of discipline. A DJ suggested using the gifts but telling the offending offspring that continued misbehavior would require the gift to be returned to Santa Claus.

Several points need to be considered when raising children. I am reminded of the Johnny Cash song “The Boy Named Sue.” If you know the song, I am sure you disagree with the father’s giving his son a girl’s name to turn him into a man who could defend himself. It is a stupid idea that hopefully no one ever actually did to their child.

Parents are not immune to producing ignorant ideas for teaching kids what they want them to learn. Some of the ideas of child-rearing that I mentioned are what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach.

Both the dad with the Christmas gifts that were fake that he threw into the fire and Johnny Cash’s father in “Boy Named Sue” was trying to make their children into adults who could be counted on in society. Maybe not in the way they wanted them to be.

Discipline is supposed to instruct youngsters in the things that they need to be productive, sensitive, and caring adults. An angry child will grow up to be an adult who is a powder keg. They may blow at any time. The boy named Sue will also be very volatile because he has been teased throughout his life.

Kiddos need to learn how to be adults. They need to have responsibility and independence at appropriate levels at a time when they can grasp the concepts and perform their best.

My father made some mistakes with us. He probably was trying to raise us the way he was. Like me he was the youngest son and had a younger sister that was spoiled rotten. I know that because the older siblings continued to baby her even when I was old enough to see what they were doing. We tried not to do that to our girls. I hope we were successful. Were we, girls?

Love is the key to growing children as much as light and fertilizer are to growing plants. Just for the fun of it, add a little humor. I know all the comments about Dad jokes. Not all dad jokes are bad. There are also Mom jokes. It is just that no one tells her that hers are not funny.

Be watching for the column on love. I’ll use Paul’s definition to help you understand how to bring a child up knowing what love is and how to show it. That is for another day.

Falling in love

January 21, 2023

“I don’t love her anymore. I don’t remember when I did.” This is a line from “The Twilight Zone” episode that is titled “The Trouble with Templeton”. Actor Booth Templeton expresses his disdain to his servant about the current Mrs. Templeton’s dalliance and speculates on what his life would be like if his first wife had not died so young.

The episode ends when his first wife and best friend ask him to go back to where he came from. A disappointing end to time travel reminds us that we must continue to live even when life seems hard. Time travel is a common vehicle on this sci-fi anthology series from the 1960s.

The questions this brought to my mind were do we love because we must, or do we love because we want to? Love is a choice. Love is a verb. These are phrases you may have read in my articles before. It also is not an emotion as many believe.

The term making love is a misnomer, as well. Love is not a noun. It is not something that you can create. The proper term is having sex. There are other phrases that you can use without stating the acronym for the full use of carnal knowledge.

I have heard people using this excuse for divorce by saying they are no longer in love with their spouse. Men and women both reason their desire to end the relationship by this logic. Sometimes lack of sex is considered the indication they are no longer loved. Sex and love have no correlation.

Physical touch is one of the “Five Love Languages” talked about in Dr. Gary Chapman’s books. This demonstration of love is not always expressed through sexual contact. Couples continue to love and experience love when they no longer express their commitment through intercourse.

I will speak about the definition of this word in another column or series of columns. As you know, sometimes I have more to say about a subject than will fit into one piece. Keep in mind that much of what I share with you is not original to me.

I read a great deal. I research through files that I have collected over the last fifty years. Would you believe that I have maintained all my college class notes? I do use the internet; I like to fall back on older research materials.

The Bible is one of my favorite resources. I do not always quote chapters and verses when using the information and wisdom it provides. I am one of those oddballs that believe in the validity of scripture. It says that God is love and those who follow Christ are to love as He did. After all, He is God.

Paul tells us in his letters in the New Testament to love our spouses, children, and everyone that we know. Even the Old Testament commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves. Jesus said this was the second most important of the commandments we received from the Hebrews.

A Smile

December 28, 2022

Ideas may be hard for some of us to come up with. I know that is not proper grammar. Give me a break, please. I am watching a movie on the Hallmark Channel. It gave me an idea for this column.

The name of the show is “A Smile as big as the Moon.” It is taken from a book of the same name by Mike Kersjes. This is not fiction. The book is a memoir because the teacher of a special education class wrote it. It is his story of what happened to them.

The football coach teacher is spurred on by one student who wants to go to Space Camp. He is a Down syndrome student. Many of his classmates have other handicaps or problems with discipline or learning disabilities.

At the time, Space Camp did not have a program for special needs students. The story is about how to convince the administration at the camp to take a chance on children that are not considered even normal. They are usually thought of as difficult to deal with.

Handling problems for these young people is not easy. Frustration, disappointment, and conflict force them to treat each other as friends and equals. One student does not believe his being in this class is fair. He was a normally well-achieving scholar who endured some setbacks in his grades.

Life is not always fair. To make a story work you must have conflicts. Real life makes for some thrilling times even in a movie script or book. This story has protagonists and antagonists. The teacher and the principal have difficulties as do the administration at Space Camp and that same special education teacher.

I have heard of space camp and am glad that they now have programs for all students and adults. I grew up during the race for space and witnessed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon for the first time in 1969. I have always attempted to follow NASA and the others pushing beyond our atmosphere.

My takeaway from this movie is that we should all share a smile with everyone that we meet every day. Kindness has no better technique for being spread than a spontaneous smile.

Charles (Chuck) Kensinger

Walk With a Servant

Tag: Love