Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does snot boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails, but where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tounges, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away... And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 14:5
Where is the love guys? I want to learn what it means to love like this. Yesterday I learned that love is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.
I learned that when people hurt you it can be reeeeeeeeeeeally easy to stay angry. I had every right to be angry, and I have every right to be angry still, and I've heard it a thousand times before that hanging on to that only hurts me more, but yesterday I realized it's actually true. Telling someone you forgive them creates.....freedom. And even though I secretly hope that the persons who hurt me cart around guilt that slowly eats away at their souls, I have better things to do than sit around hurt.
Ok so I guess I'm still working on the forgiveness part...
I want to learn what love really means. I have a feeling we get it wrong most of the time. I think the hardest thing for me is realizing that, ok, on the one hand this verse is saying all the things that we should do if we really love people, and I tend to focus on that part, but what it's also talking about is the fact that this is how God loves us.
The Message puts it like this:
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If 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.
