In honor of the faux holy day of Valentines’ Day (Hallmark has hijacked it people) I want to muse on Love and push the envelope and our comfort zones. The apostle John wrote often and was known for being the “love” guy, and he penned the Scripture stating that “God is Love.”
Well, now God being “love” is all pretty and such, but do we even believe that? And what type of love is God? My love? Your love? Free love? Unconditional love? Conservative Love? Progressive Love?
Which love is God?
Is it even possible to answer that? I believe so, and since I’ve done this before and the Love Holiday is upon us and being that my image of God is in the crapper these days, I thought I’d muse on Love and I do so by rewriting the “Love Chapter” of the Bible – 1 Corinthians 13. So, read this with me and let us pray for each other and for all people that we can begin to experience God this way and live our lives accordingly.
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Godlove: The Superior Way
If I speak human or angelic languages
but do not have God,
I am a sounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy
and understand all mysteries
and all knowledge,
and if I have all faith
so that I can move mountains
but do not have God, I am nothing.
And if I donate all my goods to feed the poor,
and if I give my body in order to boast
but do not have God, I gain nothing.
God is patient.
God is kind.
God does not envy.
God is not boastful.
God is not conceited.
God does not act improperly.
God is not selfish.
God is not provoked.
God does not keep a record of wrongs.
God finds no joy in wickedness.
God rejoices in the truth.
God bears all things.
God believes all things,
God hopes all things.
God endures all things.
God never fails.
But as for prophecies, they will come to an end;
as for languages, they will cease;
as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
For we know in part,
and we prophesy in part.
But when the perfect comes,
the partial will come to an end.
When 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 aside childish things.
For now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I will know fully,
as I am fully known.
Now these three remain: faith, hope, and God.
But the greatest of these is God.
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Take a moment and ask yourself: what IF we experienced God this way? What if we lived our lives as if God was this way? What would the world look like if ALL people who believe in God (whichever faith) lived as if God was this kind of Love?
The answer is quite simple actually: the world would be shaken to its very foundations, and human hearts (the most crafty of all entities) would begin to change and be transformed, and the world would never be the same.
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