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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. 

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