“Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”
—1 Corinthians 13:7-8a (NRSV)
What are we without love? We are without hope or reason to live.
Love is the essence of life. Love never loses faith and never loses hope. Love
is never overcome. Rather, love overcomes.
Love
Bears All Things
Love puts up with anything—but this in not meant in terms of
abuse and neglect. No, love can strengthen our resolve to put up with anything
that is godly; to put up with the strains of: financial worries, disabled
children, geriatric parents, relational conflict, the loss of loved ones, and
many other forms of suffering known within normal life.
Because love bears all things it gives us the ability to bounce
back from setbacks.
When we can bear all things we don’t give up easily.
Love
Believes All Things
Love supplies the tools, the capacity, and the wherewithal for
the faith. Faith can be pushed all the way, with limitless capacity, so long as
it is underpinned in the perfection of love. It imbues peace.
With such a thing compelling us in life, we see people in a
positive light, and the benefit of the doubt is our preference, not that we are
easily fooled. But we want to believe
in the goodness and sanctity of life.
With limitless faith we can do almost anything in life.
Love
Hopes All Things
This is similar to the above. With infinite facility, hope fuels
belief and energises our capacity to believe.
When we think of never giving up, we think of never losing hope.
Even when hope is distant, perhaps for a time invisible, there is sufficient
hope to believe hope will return. Hope never needs to be visible. Hope can transcend the human need of sight in
order to see the way.
When we have hope that endures all things we have love abiding.
Love
Endures All Things
With the ability for longsuffering, love’s patience attests to
the virtuous strength that the Spirit of God supplies. Love’s endurance
glorifies God.
When we love in ways to endure, longer and longer, never giving
up, we also attest to this strength in love that empowers our endurance. With
love we can remain.
***
In love, is power to put up with what seems impossible, to grow,
to believe the incredible and see, to hope beyond sight and believe, and to
endure many more things than we think we can endure. Love transcends failure.
It never ends.
© 2012 S. J. Wickham.
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