but the greatest of these is Love.

i should be doing a million other things... but instead i’m sitting down to write again. so many experiences...thoughts...messages...ideas seem to always circulate through my mind.. but when i sit down to type them out.. they vanish... and the only word i can conjure up is such a simple one. i write so much about it, and i think it’s because it’s the only solidity in my life... really, in the entire world.. that matters.

love.

it’s amazing how many ideas people have on this one word.. and sorry to say.. but most people have it completely wrong.. including me. most of the time. but every once in awhile, the Lord reminds me of what it truly means to love.. and i finally gain perspective again. the words, inspired by Love Himself, penetrate my shallow..hollow..soulful heart... slowly healing what was broken. it doesn’t happen in a moment but over time. the more i meditate on these words, the more i am taught. the more i learn about Him.. the more i realize how far i have left to go.

"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, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and 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 and 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, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

1 Corinthians 13

this is it. this is love.. and yet, it’s sometimes so hard to grasp.

we want love to be this really good feeling that we get deep inside of us. we want love to be proved to us.

thankfully, real love was proved on the cross. this love is unconditional, and no matter what has fallen through.. it believes all things.. hopes all things.. endures all things.

i long to love like Christ loves. when i forgive someone, i want His love to flow through me and cover the past. i don’t want to expect pay back, and i don’t want them to feel what i’ve felt. the love i want keeps no record of wrongs.

i’m not settling for anything less than this love. His Love.

Written: April 2008