“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.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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