Remembering and Living in Love

February has come to a close and the Love Challenge is complete--or rather, as Dea wisely said, it has barely begun. By the grace of God, I've managed to get 1 Corinthians 13 into my mind; it will take the rest of my life to get it into my heart and live out its truth.

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 move 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, English Standard Version

I am so far from displaying this kind of love--but I rest in the perfect love of my Savior, and trust that He will continue His work of molding my heart to love like His. And I cling to the hope of these precious promises, that His love for me will never pass away and that I will one day see Him face to face!