Faith, Hope, & Love Abide

          Valentine’s Day is a great moment to be conscious of how we love each other!  Though 1Corinthians 13 is probably one of the most quoted passages in Scripture at weddings, this chapter has lessons for every season.  We are to love others above all things.  That is so hard sometimes!  We are all messy; we are all fallen.  But we’re to love anyways.  We reject; we run away; we hate, lust, covet, & war.  Jesus accepts; beckons & meets us in our mud, & walked blamelessly on this earth.  Can you even fathom that?  Doing this whole life thing in pure perfection.  Unfathomable perfection!

The Way of Love
          If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  And if I have prophetic powers, & understand all mysteries & all knowledge, & if I have faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give away all I have, & if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
          Love is patient & kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
          Love never ends.  As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part & we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.  When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
          So now faith, hope, & love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love. -1Corinthians 13 (ESV)

          --Happy Valentine’s Day to YOU!