Prayer

 

Playful and Prayerful

 

But it (love) is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.

 

How do these words above land in your mind, heart, and soul this day?  I really want to know.  Are you finding this study of 1 Corinthians illuminating, exhausting, or a bit of both?  Are you growing weary of focusing on love because it takes so much energy and effort to show care to others?  Where are you at?  Love, Paul says, is happy with the truth.  So, be truthful with yourself and God.  Do you have questions, or want clarification, or would you like an exemption for loving that person, because believe me, I have a list of people in my heart today I would rather not be kind, patient, or believe God can unharden their hearts.  You are part of a community of interpreters who for centuries have sought to playfully and prayerfully wrestle with these words.  Note the two words, playfully and prayerfully.  Sometimes we get so serious and somber with the Bible.  Sometimes we act as if we just try harder, we can solve every mystery there is.

 

In the end, love is a mystery, just like God, who is love radiating and reverberating.  I cannot predict love.  I cannot control love.  I cannot tell love where to go or who to avoid.  Love is.  Period, full stop.  The moment I think I have love all figured out (which I am laughing right now at even writing that sentence because I have never had love all figured out), love will always evolve and expand and embrace a new space I thought wasn’t practical or possible. 

 

Take love out for a cup of coffee, tea, lunch, or on a walk.  I pray today you will risk letting love loose, especially in a situation you would never think that word is possible.  I pray most of all that you will pay attention to how love shows up in your life and sings to your soul.  May you and I both discover fun, faithful, and creative ways to be love-activated in the world, letting our belovedness loose.  Amen.

The Hug IS Real!!

 

Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done,

 

Yesterday, Paul described love positively; today, he tells us what love is not.  Today, he sets a boundary to help us distinguish what is out of bounds when it comes to expressing hesed (completely undeserved kindness and generosity) to others.  Yet, I don’t think Paul’s list was meant to be exhaustive or exclusive.  Paul is seeking to awaken our sacred imagination.  I invite you to ponder when a moment you recently felt unconditionally and unceasingly loved?  Who shared that love?  What stirred in you?  Try your best to recall and recreate the experience ~ the physical sensations, the emotional experience, and thoughts that still stir in response.  Hold and be held by that memory and moment. 

 

Now, bring to mind a time when you experienced judgment or the hurt from a fellow featherless biped.  Maybe someone was jealous and stole your good idea.  Maybe some walked into your life with their nose in the air ~ like the Sneetches on Beaches who had stars upon thars.  Maybe someone was arrogant, brash, and bullying.  Too much of what we hear on the news falls into the category of examples of what isn’t hesed, love.  This, in turn, activates the negativity part of our brain that wants to protect us.  After all, we reason, if that act of homophobia, racism, sexism, dead-naming, prejudice, or harmful hate happened to them, it could happen to us.  We end up fixated and focusing on the negative as a way to shelter and shield ourselves.  But it can also block and barricade the good from penetrating our hearts, souls, and lives.  The negativity in our mind becomes a brash bully that says, “What good is recalling a hug from a friend, that won’t help you in the ‘real’ world”.  Only that hug happened in the real world.  Life is complicated, contradictory, and complex. 

 

Today, ponder where love has shown up so far in your life this year.  May you trust in the goodness and God-ness who sets boundaries to explore and experiment with hesed still today.  Amen.  

More than our Gumption

 

Love is patient. Love is kind.

 

Paul begins a litany of describing and defining love with two words ~ patient and kind.  Fun Bible Nerd fact, the word “love” in Hebrew (that Paul would have learned as a Jewish lad) is hesed.  This is a word usually reserved to refer to God.  And the word, hesed, is difficult to translate into English or into some definitive definition ~ just like God.  God is always breaking and bursting out of boxes that we want to put God into, so we can control and comprehend God.  One Jewish scholar says that hesed, is “completely undeserved kindness and generosity.”  Hesed is not just a cozy and cuddly feeling that warms the cockles of our hearts like a mug of hot chocolate; Hesed is active.  Hesed is the restorative work in the world that goes beyond our human abilities and agendas.  Fun Bible Nerd fact (I know, two in one morning meditation, how lucky are you?), in the book of Ruth, Ruth embodies, embraces, and expresses a hesed love for Naomi, her mother-in-law, after the three tragic deaths of the men in the family.  Hesed is the willingness to show up again and again and again, trusting that God is not finished.  Hesed is willing to bravely and boldly be in the world in a way that doesn’t play by the rules and regulations of power or politics or even piety that is preached from pulpits.  Hesed isn’t interested in the balance sheet or transactions but wants to affirm the goodness and God-ness of all that was, is, and will be.  Paul had grown up hearing about Hesed, but Paul was a poor practitioner of this word.  He persecuted early followers of Jesus.  He was a brash bully, convinced of his own convictions rather than confessing his own vulnerability.  I see this play out too much in our world today.  We are echoes of the early Paul wanting to prove those “other people” wrong and foolish and the problem.  We get our paperwork for the permission to hate from the news networks of our choice and the invisible algorithms that control what pops up on social media.  Both patience and kindness take time and a lot of prayer.  Living the patient and kind hesed of God is more gumption than I have on my own.  Which is to say, both patience and kindness happen only with God’s gracious/self-giving Spirit.  Is there someone and somewhere today you need patient and kind love?  Name that, pray that, seek to breathe in God’s grace in new ways.  And may you feel supported and surrounded by a patient and kind God whose love has us and will never let us go.  Amen.

Letting Love Guide

 

Today, we honor the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  As we prayerfully ponder the ways his life and lingering message are meaningful to our hearts, I remind you of a few quotes from Dr. King:

 

“I have decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

 

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.  Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.  Hatred darkens life, love illuminates it.”

 

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

 

As those quotes simmer and stir in your heart, read the words of Paul written to a contentious and cantankerous community ~ where people hurt and harmed one another (sound familiar?) ~ where people dehumanized and demoralized each other ~ where people did not dignify the divinity of each other.  Let Paul’s words play with Dr. King’s words today in your sacred imagination:

 

I may speak in the languages of humans and of angels. But if I don’t have love, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal. I may have the gift to speak what God has revealed, and I may understand all mysteries and have all knowledge. I may even have enough faith to move mountains. But if I don’t have love, I am nothing. I may even give away all that I have and give up my body to be burned. But if I don’t have love, none of these things will help me.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.

Love never comes to an end. There is the gift of speaking what God has revealed, but it will no longer be used. There is the gift of speaking in other languages, but it will stop by itself. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will no longer be used. Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to speak what God has revealed is incomplete. But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will no longer be used. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I no longer used childish ways. Now we see a blurred image in a mirror. Then we will see very clearly. Now my knowledge is incomplete. Then I will have complete knowledge as God has complete knowledge of me.

So these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the best one of these is love.

 

What is God’s love calling you to do right now?  Where is love calling you to risk, reminding you that love never guarantees success, fame, or fortune.  Rather, our faithfulness is to the One whose love radiates in life.  How might God’s love author your life today or just for a few minutes right now?  May your ponderings on this day infuse and inspire you to let God’s fierce and faithful love loose in the world.  Amen.

Prayer for Our Feeble Attempts

 

God of affection and attention, who invites us to align our hearts, souls, minds, might, and whole lives to You.  We confess this isn’t easy, God.  Have You been online recently?  Have you witnessed our leaders berate and belittle each other, and blame one another?  Have You seen how people’s identity is fed by bank account balance and politics, and being seen as in control/in charge?  Of course, You have God.  This teaching on love feels both difficult and demanding, yet also like the balm our souls need.  How can this be?  We don’t comprehend, but are compelled by the promise and possibility.  We trust, O God, You are not asking us to be perfect or get straight A’s every day at sharing love.  You ask us to try, and in our trying, You collaborate and conspire with us.  So God, take my life and let it be wrapped up in Your great mystery.  Take my efforts, faint and feeble, let me be part of working with You to let heaven loose here and now.  Take all I do and say and where I am, so that Your great love might expand and embrace more than I can imagine.  Take this day, and fuel my light to shine.  With God’s love to each and every one of you.  Amen. 

Concoction of Complexity

 

o, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

 

Paul is seeking to help us realize and recognize that God’s love fuels and feeds our lives.  Part of Paul’s point is that human beings, left to our own scheming and dreaming, will fail to enact and embody God’s love ethic alone.  This isn’t just a lack of knowledge, as Paul says.  It isn’t about increasing our faith like some commodities we control.  Paul is encouraging us to trust that God’s love has us, always.  Right now and every day this year.  Not that we won’t still be in the wilderness and wildness of life.  Not that we won’t be lured by other idols rather than the unconditional love of God. The passage this week asks us to reflect on life, what is beneath, why we do what we do.  The truth is, our brains are adept and agile enough to convince us we have altruistic motivation when we are just trying to earn the affection or attention of another.  To be sure, we are all a complex, complicated, contradictory, messy mixture.  We are all the baking soda and vinegar of the elementary science fair volcano, or a shaken soda bottle that could explode at any second now.  Did you catch what Paul says?   It doesn’t matter what you believe or do…that isn’t the point of faith, religion, or meaning in life.  Wait, what??  That statement can shake the foundations of much of what is found on churches' websites and preaching.  What does Paul mean, it doesn’t matter what I say/believe/do?  Paul is challenging our notion of what the means and ends of our life are.  Paul is challenging the direction and destination we are traveling.  If our means is to prove and earn God’s unconditional love and grace, we are still missing the point.  But if we let God’s unconditional and unceasing love be the jet fuel that propels our souls, we begin the wayless way of faith.  I invite you to sit with how counter-cultural this is.  I know for me, when I go chasing after what the world markets as a “good life”, I am often left empty or bankrupt.  When I strive for my own success rather than for the goodness and God-ness in life, my soul feels like it has a bad case of indigestion.  When I create litmus tests that another person must pass to be acceptable and earn my affection, the world shutters, and God sighs.  Hold this hard, holy truth as a light for your life and my life, and our life together in the world right now.  Amen.