the way of love

Good morning brothers and sisters,
Yesterday Paul told us he would show us a more excellent way. Today's reading makes clear that that way is love. We usually hear this famous chapter at weddings, but it isn't talking specifically about romantic love. Instead Paul is talking about the love we are called to have for everyone (as Jesus reminds us, even for our enemies). This love is powerful and challenging; deep and unselfish. Spiritual gifts are important, as Paul told us in the last section, but none of our gifts is as important as being guided in everything we do by love.

He talks about how knowledge and prophecy are incomplete gifts that will someday come to an end. We know only in part; we see the future only dimly, though one day we will see God and everything else clearly. Love remains forever, leading us forward and outward into the world around us. Paul says when everything else passes away faith, hope and love abide, but the greatest of these is love.

May your day and life be full of love,
Sam

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.