I re-read I Corinthians 13 again
I almost have it memorized
It was read at my wedding
As it is at many weddings
But in our wedding, it was recited by my then 2nd and 3rd grade class
Their bright faces and voices
Full of the hope of childhood
Has anyone noticed how impossible it is to love
The way love is described in I Corinthians 13?
No, really
We quote it and put it on our tea towels and prayer journals
But actually loving like that?
To ALWAYS trust?
ALWAYS protect?
ALWAYS hope?
ALWAYS persevere?
To not keep a record of wrongs?
Who, reading this, has never kept a record of wrongs?
Not to be easily angered
Nor to seek self
It is a daunting list of attributes
It is only in reading I John 4 that we come to understand
God IS love
We love because he first loved us
Of course we cannot do love perfectly
Even on our “best days”
I wonder again why that most famous passage on love
Is filled mostly with statements of what it is not
Rather than what it is
Love is patient
Love is kind
But after that, there are so many statements in the negative
Telling us what love is NOT
Instead of what love IS
The world gets love so horribly, crazily wrong
There too I am tempted to use NOT statements
Love is NOT an emotion
It is NOT something you fall into and out of
Like an illness
It is NOT blind
Rather it sees and still, remarkably, loves
It is so much better than all of those things
So much deeper than anything the Hallmark Channel
Could conjure up
Even with thousands of snowball fights and gingerbread contests
That is a pale, pale imitation of the real thing
Like looking through a clouded mirror
We not only cannot love like this
We cannot even conceive of such love
I imagine God’s love like this lake
Wide and deep and clear and beautiful
But the analogy breaks down almost immediately
I can see to the other side of this lake
As the sunrise lights up the houses on the other bank
I cannot see to the end of God’s love
I cannot go to the depth of God’s love
We sing songs about the never-ending, reckless love of God
That love which chases me as the Good Shepherd
Leaving behind the 99
If love does not envy,
What does not envying look like?
It looks like happiness for another’s success
Contentedness
A sense of security rather than insecurity
Thankfulness for what one has
If love does not boast,
It is humble
Not needing the strokes and accolades of men
If love does not dishonor others
It builds them up
Speaking words that are good and just
Even when the object of such words isn’t there
If love is not self-seeking
It is selfless
Thinking of yourself less
Focusing on another
If love is not easily angered
It is peaceful and patient
Believing the best
If love keeps no record of wrongs
It is quick to forgive and forget
It is not focused on the past
It respects rather than humiliates
The only way we can love
In such an otherworldly way
Is if that love is born of the Spirit
An overflow of our connection to the vine
His love pours out of us
Because it is too much to contain it all
Because once you have been loved that way
You long to love others with the same abandon
The same freedom
The same active unselfishness
I think I have been reading I Corinthians 13 wrong all these years
In light of I John 4
That God IS love
It is not a chapter about all the ways we are failing in love
Though I think it is an indictment on the world’s poor definition of love
It is rather a chapter about who God is
What his love looks like
So, like the cashier trained to spot counterfeits by closely studying the real thing,
Our finite minds can have something to hold onto
When they try to grasp the infinitude of his love
Who wouldn’t want to be loved like that?
And who, grasping that they actually are loved that way,
Wouldn’t want to overflow with that kind of love towards others?
Love is a fruit
We cannot tie it onto a branch and call it a growing, living thing
It grows off a healthy branch
Receiving nourishment from the watering of God’s Word
And the nutrients
Of his perfect, infinite Love
Wind and the Waves 