A Surprising Gap

In the forward of his book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis senses that there is an uneven balance between love and pleasure.

He notices that Need-pleasure foreshadows and points us to Need-love, however, Appreciation-pleasure does not foreshadow Gift-love in the same way.

Nothing he could do would make it fit - the gap was to large to bridge.

So Lewis introduces a fifth concept – Appreciation love.

This breaks everything open and now we can answer why there is a love that is deeper than our normal use of the word.

Appreciation-love: this is when the heart and mind respond with a love that goes beyond pleasure.

•Appreciative love undergirds, influences and informs Need-love and Gift-love
•Appreciative love endures because it is rooted in the very source of our being, not merely in our behaving
•Appreciative love springs out of gratitude and takes into full cognizance the mystery of my being before the one who is the cause of my being and who Himself can never, not be
•Appreciative love, as it relates to our response to God, is a love that loves out of gratitude to Him; it is a love that bends the heart and will in worship

This is the cornerstone of the answer to loneliness

There is a reason that both the conversation with the woman at the well and the interaction with the woman with the alabaster jar of ointment end on the theme of worship

–Both women had loved and lost
–Both knew the deception of love
–Both had lived through Need-love and Gift-love
–Both knew the limitations of pleasure