Second Sunday of Advent - LOVE

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Weekly Devotional - Second Sunday of Advent - LOVE

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Weekly Devotional - Second Sunday of Advent - LOVE

by Rev. Sue Yarber

1 Corinthians 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.And 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. If 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.

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

Love 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. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete 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 an end to childish ways. For 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. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

It doesn't seem to matter how many times I have heard these words, each time I get a key phrase that rings in my head as a resounding bell, bidding me to take a closer look inside. I can quickly list the ways in which I fall short of the kind of love described in the epistle to the church at Corinth. It is far more challenging to see the ways that I bear this kind of love in the world. Even to consider that I am a Christ-bearer, one who strives to exemplify Christ's love in this broken and battered world, is a lot to take in.

Beyond the worldly notions of love: romantic, giddy, passionate love, and nurturing, gentle, protective love, there is a love that lasts forever, a truth that never dies. God's unconditional love for us lays a road for us to follow into the light of day that will not darken. Love is, in the end the only thing that matters. It is the one thing upon which every life is, ultimately, measured. I have never preached a funeral in which the person's profession was the main topic or the kind of car they drove was of any consequence whatsoever. All I have ever talked about is how the person demonstrated love for God and the world around them. Love is the only thing that lasts forever.
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Posted by "D's Cheeze" at Sunday, December 07, 2008
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