Skip to main content

Love Never Fails?

             Love never fails…And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (I Corinthians 8a & 13)

Did you know that the wonderful section of I Corinthians we’re examining is a rabbit trail of a sort? The main topic Paul was addressing was spiritual gifts and their proper use. In the middle, he interrupts himself to say (in effect) “but let me tell you about something that’s lots better than these gifts: love.” In the quote above, the ellipses (…) are a summing up of what he’d said about gifts, with verse 13 as a summation of his whole argument about stuff that won’t last forever, and stuff that will.

But now, let’s get to our tough stuff again. Love never fails? Really? So why do 50% of all marriages end in divorce? And why didn’t I, as daughter and caregiver, enjoy taking care of my father, relishing the idyllic occupation? Why do people start out full of passion for their jobs, and end up grinding their teeth or crying on the way to work because they can’t stand it anymore? What idiot could look at reality and say that love never fails? Who could listen to the discord in our society, and especially to the portion that talks most about love, inclusion, and tolerance and say that love never fails?

Paul was right. Love never fails, but people do. We’re limited. We only have so much time, energy, and patience. Without some means of refilling our “love tank,” we’ll reach a point where we just can’t love. And that often happens before the need for love runs out. And sometimes, love doesn’t fail because it was never involved. What we called, “Love” might have been lust, need, possession, competition, wish-fulfillment, ego... or it might have been nothing more than a feeling, which isn’t love at all. That’s the problem with the whole “Love is love” game.  

            And so we come to the last part. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. Now why would Paul say that the greatest is love? One possibility is that love is the ground from which faith and hope grow. Another is that love is the flower that grows from one’s faith in someone and one’s hope for that someone. And another that comes to mind is that there is a sense in which faith and hope aren’t things we can do by the force of our will, but we can love even when we don’t feel loving. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

Listen To Him

              The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him . (Deuteronomy 18:15)           Today, we switch from Jesus’ claims of “I am” to prophecies made about Him. My Bible platform is starting in Deuteronomy. I’d start in Genesis, where we would learn that the one who would save us would be a descendant of Eve (Genesis 3:15), of Noah (by default), Abram and Sara(Genesis 12:1-3). Isaac (Genesis 17:19), Jacob (Genesis 25:23), Judah (Genesis 29:8), and David (II Samuel 7:12-16). There were also references to a new covenant (Jer. 31:31-34; Ezek. 36:22-32). In addition, there were prophecies about when and where the prophet/Messiah would be born and what would happen to him.           Of course, naysayers will claim that Jesus’ life was retrofitted or reverse enginee...
Post a Comment
Read more