Love bears and endures.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 1 Corinthians 13. 7
This important passage from 1 Corinthians comes around in our lectionary today with familiar words about Love..."If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal." Sometimes I feel noisy and clanging.
Often this passage is hard for me as I recall times I have withheld love (or like) in particular situations. Pray as you go* this morning asks, "how might you word those times in conversation with God?" That is a tough question. I can easily call to mind times when I have loved deeply and been "patient, kind, not envious or rude." But confessing to God when I have withheld love is not so easy.
The words "bear and endure" caught my eye and my heart this morning as I read and reflected on this passage. "Love bears, believes, hopes and endures," the author of 1 Cor. says. Perhaps bearing and enduring are an essential part of Love; it is not always easy but it is a commandment, in fact the greatest commandment, as Jesus said. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and Love your neighbor as yourself."
As the Porter's Gate sings here...let us be known by the way we love, by bearing and enduring and loving (liking) through whatever walls our egos put up.
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