Where is the Love?
Sometimes I think love has taken a holiday.
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. 1 Corinthians 13:1-8
Love is multidirectional. It flows from one to all, not just to some and not others.
But we are really good at channeling our love to specific individuals and holding it back from those we have trouble loving.
Yet we are good at spotting the failure to be loving when we see it in those we disagree with. Look at how he is behaving, we say. That isn't love.
Love your neighbor. That was the commandment form Christ, and we like to believe we do that. But do we really?
I love some of my neighbors. I don't love the unloving. And of course I am the best judge of that, right?
When we hear the message at weddings that love is patient and love is kind, we think of the conflicts a newly married couple will overcome together, and we smile.
But what about our patience with people who are boastful, angry or loud?
Where is the love there?
In the end, love will endure everything we throw at it. We, though, will wear out. We will crumble and fall apart, and it will take an act of love to pull our pieces back together again.
More to come...