Love can miss the target and be ineffective
when it is not directed by discernment which is an
understanding. heart.

     Love helps a lot but sometimes it is not enough. There are times when love with discerment can accomplish what love without discernment cannot accomplish.
    Discernment is the ability to judge well. In the spiritual or God-consciousness context, that applies when discernment is coupled with love it is perception in the absence of judging with a view to obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding.
    Oftentimes love is instinct-based rather than rational-based. This is true despite the fact love is learned. There are many teachers of love just as there are many teachers of the opposites of love, hate and apathy. Love is learned from people, not merely from their precepts or deliberate efforts to teach, but from their examples. Love can also be learned from experiences that include tragedy, trial and error, challenges, suffering, nature and peak experiences.
     Love applied to a specific situation or condition without discernment may be of no effect insofar as positively impacting the intended subject or object. Here is a case in point. The mother, who we will call Elizabeth, loved her child Jack but she refused to allow him to be vaccinated for polio. The consequence, Jack became infected with the poliovirus. Her love without discernment was not enough to prevent her child  from being infected with the poliovirus. Elizabeth continued to love Jack after he became infected  with the poliovirus but she could not return to the time when Jack  did not have polio and decide differently, as she wished she could do. There is no cure for polio, it can only be prevented.
     Had Elizabeth had discernment to have Jack vaccinated for polio like the other parents of children attending the same school and church as Jack, like these other children who did not have polio, her son, in all probability would not have become infected with the poliovirus.
     To be effective, love does not always require discernment. Acting on the love instinct can be sufficient. For loving may become as much a part of the person as breathing. But there are times when love is void or of no effect in the absence of discernment. Discernment can be critical in obtaining spiritual guidance and understanding in choosing the appropriate option to impel love in being effective.
     Engaging in prayer, meditation, contemplation, silence, communing with nature and worship are practices that can enable a person to be discernment-conscious. In this state of consciousness, discernment becomes a way of life and like love automatically connects with love when necessary..
     Discernment is no less important than love itself. Love cannot be fully sufficient without beng enraptured with discernment.

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Copyright 2019 by Uriah J. Fields