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In a simple word search from Biblegateway.com the word “LOVE” is mentioned over 760 times. All in various contexts of course I am sure. What amazes me is how many other of my word searches yielded such smaller numbers in comparison to the simple universal word of Love. All traditions, religions, and philosophies have various forms of their own full definition of the meaning of the word LOVE. In all of them it is an attribute of ourselves that the optimist in me believes we all want more of both in and through our lives to others.
I often wonder how much more effect there would be in the world if our focus was put on such an unconditional attribute of life more than that which we are fighting against. I do love the way love is described in 1 Corinthians 13.
Love Is the Greatest
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages[b] and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.[c] All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (Biblegateway.com)
Such a daily journey of learning to love in such a way. Sometimes we hit it right on the mark, and sometimes we miss it all together. Yet in the midst of it, God’s infinite love in and through us gives us the ability to keep moving forward in loving ourselves better, and in turn loving others not just as we would love ourselves, but as they want to be loved.
Kameron Lombard © 2011
