1 Corinthians 13

 I have been asking God to mark the path he desires for me to walk- to open my eyes and let me see clearly, and have the courage to walk in it. Each day I am finding that my prayers are being answered, and "the path" is not exactly what I thought it might mean. In a challenging time, I asked for grace to walk humbly with God as to discern the right responses and course of action outwardly and in my own heart. As one day passed, the grace came, but only to ask for more grace. As night passed, I woke up early-- too early-- and found resentment in my heart. I hated it. It looked ugly on me, and in me, and so I asked for more grace. It came in the word: Love.

Now, waking up with bitterness and resentment is probably the worst thing to wake up to. I would rather endure the sting of loss and heartache before bitterness and resentment. Lindsay, you must love. I know a lot of Bible verses about love. I know what God says about love. Love is my favorite thing. But never have I truly had to strain those muscles to press harder into what it means to love than now.

God put His word in my heart; it was 1 Corinthians 13, probably the first passages Christians hear when it comes to love. Elementary, if you ask me. But it is not so elementary. I began remembering each line of the passage, and rewriting it in my heart:

    If I sing the most beautiful songs and speak the most eloquent words that have ever been heard to man or angel, even though the sounds are a gift from God, if I have not love, I am only a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. 

And if I have the ability to understand and explain the ways of God and know with all faith that the mountains in my life and others' will move, but have not love, I AM NOTHING.

If I sacrifice and tithe all that I can, and offer my time and energy and all I am to God as the only sacrifice I can give, but have not love, I gain nothing.  

 For love is patient and kind, and right now I surrender that my heart is not either of those things. 

Love is not arrogant or rude. In order for me to love, I must humble myself completely, through the power of God; even if I do not know what that humility may look like or the sacrifice it may cost. But I realize that the sacrifice is not mine. It is Christ's, who made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant and was made in human likeness; becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross (Phil. 2:3-8 .... read into that a little).

 It does not insist on its own way and is not irritable or resentful. It keeps no records of wrongs, does not find delight in doing wrong things, but rejoices in the truth; and I must seek God's truth, not my own in order to love.

 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

 I must not give up on my ability to love, because God can love through me. God is love, and God never fails. Love never fails. 

 When everything else goes away, love will remain, and God will come and make it complete. If what I know of love now is so sweet, though difficult at times, when Christ comes and makes it complete, it will be worth the fight within myself for love.

 As a child I learned about love, but now that I am grown, I exercise love as one who has grown being formed in love. I must act like I know Love for I have no excuses but my own sinfulness, which I have been freed from. 

 I can only see a little bit of why I should love, and what Love is doing in me. Like looking in a blurry mirror. But one day I will see clearly and I will be able to know Love as if it were my own reflection. I will be able to see me as God sees me, which I admittedly cannot see now.

And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love. 

I know that I have been defiant, resentful, and have acted against God in ways that frustrate me when I am treated as such, and yet God loves me, prays for me and acts in mercy towards me. It is my love to extend the same to all those I live with and interact with.

It is amazing to me how I have had some pretty random scriptures in my heart this week, and one of them was the last part of 1 Corinthians 13, "For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." I haven't studied 1 Corinthians in ages (literally), and so I give thanks to God for writing his Word on my heart.

-Lindsay