This week we are opening our hearts and lives to the poem prayer of Paul on love. I’ve encouraged you to lay these words alongside the sharp shards of a situation in your life. I’ve invited you to let these words be in conversation with what is unsolved and unresolved. I’ve named that this isn’t a magic trick that will suddenly make everything better.
Today, I want to dive and dwell into what Paul is saying about love. I believe 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 isn’t about human love, but about God’s love. This is the way God’s love works and who God is. Read these words slowly, savoring each syllable with me.
4 Love is patient;
love is kind;
love is not envious
or boastful
or arrogant
5 or rude.
It does not insist on its own way;
it is not irritable;
it keeps no record of wrongs;
6 it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing
but rejoices in the truth.
7 Love bears all things,
believes all things,
hopes all things,
endures all things.
Love (God’s love) never ends.
Now, I invite you to go back and re-read with an openness and inviting God to let these words sink and sing to your soul. Where exactly do you need God’s patient love ~ with yourself, with others, with meetings today? Be specific! Where do you need God’s kind love to reside in your life at this moment? Again, name a place and space where this is your deepest prayer. Where do you want to let go of the envy of comparison? How might you do that? Where do you long to let go of needing to prove yourself or the need to be necessary or show how productive you are? Where have you been arrogant or rude? Where do you need to shred the record of wrongdoing ~ for yourself and others?
Pause after each line letting these ancient words move in your life
with the love of God that will never let any of us go. Amen.
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