Living Love

The easy-listening TV music channel plays mostly love songs. Okay, many are love-lost songs, but that’s another subject. People think finding the ‘love of your life’ is a goal they must achieve for happiness and satisfaction. The way they get there is circuitous at best and controlling at worst.

Thankfully, God’s love isn’t as complicated. The Bible says, “God is love.” He knows we need it, and it’s His love that will fill the hungry hole in our hearts. The “Love Chapter” is where we may learn the definition and description of real love. Living the ‘most excellent way’ is loving others God’s way (1 Corinthians 12:31-13:13). The key verses for me are these:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  1 Corinthians 13:4-7

These qualities identify that we belong to Christ, so living love insists that they inhabit our thoughts and choices. Reading through and considering them regularly reminds me to choose the kind word rather than the critical one when my friend asks my opinion of her potato salad. It keeps me honest with God about my thought life, e.g., am I truly loving my neighbor by driving her to the grocery store or am I trying to impress my other neighbors? These verses get to the heart of the matter.

So let’s let faith, hope, and love lead us, but as verse 13 concludes, “the greatest of these is love.”