1 Corinthians 13:1-13
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
On any given day, most of us would say we are pretty loving people. Notice I didn’t say loveable… but I believe we all want to at least think we are fairly loving toward others. But if you read the list of qualities in this passage, you will find that we all fall short on quite a few of them. The very people we love are those with whom we are often impatient. We often want what others have, and more than a few of us insist on our own way. We love conditionally… we try to make ourselves look better than the next guy…we fly off the handle more times than we care to count!
These are not the actions of someone who loves genuinely… but they are very human actions. I don’t mean to excuse our behavior… and honestly, one of the great mysteries of Christian faith is how/why God continues to love us when we are so unlovely – particularly toward each other. As the Apostle Paul has aptly pointed out, we see things in a fog for now. Someday we will have all the answers, but for now, we must trust that God is handling things for us perfectly.
I’m pretty sure that we mortals would not be able to handle knowing what God knows. He has allowed us to sort of sugarcoat a lot of things about ourselves and others that allows us to love each other… and yet, God loves us warts and all! Now that’s pure love!
Having said all of this, I like to think that I am a loving person… that I treat others with kindness and respect… and that God is pleased with my efforts. In reading this passage again, I can clearly see that I fall short a lot of the time. Thankfully, my challenge – and yours – is to keep trying… to trust God, to hope that He will continue to grant us grace and mercy, and to work harder at loving more deeply and generously. Without love in action, our faith is hollow. How extravagant is your love these days?
©2012 Debbie Robus
No comments:
Post a Comment