Love!

Hang my locket around your neck,
Wear my ring on your finger.
Love is invincible facing danger and death.
Passion laughs at the terrors of hell.
The fire of love stops at nothing-
It sweeps everything before it.
Floodwaters can’t drown love,
Torrents of rain can’t put it out.
Love can’t be bought, love can’t be sold-
It’s not to be found in the marketplace.”

Song of Songs 8: 6-7

I am kind of awed by this passage. I came across it yesterday and was kind of stopped dead in my tracks. I have been studying love a lot lately, mostly because it is something I am not very good at. Jesus said it was the only way. That all else is nothing without it. The scriptures even go, as far as to say that god is love. My whole life I grew up thinking love was a feeling. Something that happens within me, but what I am learning is that it has nothing to do with any of that. It is something we are, a way of life. Jesus said we must die to ourselves, take up our own cross, and follow. In essence I believe he was saying that we must become love. Love is selfless. It is for the good of others. Take a look at “1 Corinthians 13”

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. 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’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 thing 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

Can I pray?

Jesus we are taken by your ways of life. I pray for you to take us deep into the essence of love. Let it become our way. Let it flood our minds and our hearts. Let it impassionate us. Let it become more than words on our tong. Let it consume us like a blazing fire and engulf everything around us. Transform us into what brings you glory. Transform us into your very essence and that is LOVE! Thanks and amen