Good morning! Not including the lengthy, but profitable scriptural passage below that you are about to read, this is one of the most abbreviated, Monday Short meditations that I have ever written! The subject came to my mind as I attended the 60th, yes you read it right, the 60th wedding anniversary of a couple Saturday night. There was loud applause, applicable for the occasion. There was loud music, appropriate for the occasion. For attendees, we witnessed evidence of the fact that love can exist beyond the normal. That is what I would call loud love. Sixty years of marriage speaks volumes!
This made me think of Jesus’ commandment for us to love one another, not just in marriage, but we are to show love to all our brothers and sisters. We are even to show love to our enemies, not be conceding to their ways, but by leading them to a better way. A better way? Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
So, here is my challenge to you this week regarding love for one another: “Make some noise!” Be blessed!
“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have. Love doesn’t strut, Doesn’t have a swelled head, Doesn’t force itself on others, Isn’t always “me first,” Doesn’t fly off the handle, Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others, Doesn’t revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end. Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good. We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.” (I Corinthians 13:1-13 The Message Bible)
Still committed to the climb,
Mark L. King