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. 3-7If 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.
1 Corinthians 13 - The Message
David Jensen said...
ReplyDeleteI needed this so much today. Love is what we all need, love is what we all need to show more than anything else. I also love the phrase "God Hates Hate". I hope and pray that someday the hate that people have completely goes away. The world will be a much better place when that happens.
A quote I once read was "Hate is not the opposite of love. Indifference is." Under hate is often anger and under anger is often fear or wounding. There is the concept of love and then there is opening the heart to the depths and letting ourselves mourn and feel and then the love often organically arises. For me lately love has not been such an easy thing, so I have been working to face the realities of the human experience so I can see the limitations of humans and see the time people take to learn and the processes humanity goes through. It seems to help me feel less hurt personally by it all. It seems to help me have more compassion and less judgment. I still am not to love as an experience, but perhaps love as a verb I have arrived at through this endeavor, or at least less hatred.
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