Love in the Meantime

1 Corinthians 13
Love Is the Greatest
1 If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
13 Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.

This is a very popular portion of scripture in Christian circles. It is commonly used in weddings, I know it was used in our wedding, and I have heard it referenced in countless teachings in the five years I have been pursuing Christ. It is bloated with the truth it contains, each verse pregnant with the potential to give life.

As I have continued to think about the vital role that love plays in the foundation that God has constructed the universe on, so many questions have risen within me. Questions that I do not have the answers to and the answers I do have lead to new questions. The integral root to elucidation lies in establishing a definition for love. So casting conventional wisdom aside, to put too fine a point on it, what is love? What does it do, and how do I know it when I encounter it at work? Like all pursuit of kingdom knowledge it is to our glory to search out the truth.

Dictionary.com (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/love) has 28 definition entries for the word love. The definitions range from a feeling or desire for to a need or requirement of. So if I love something I have a strong feeling for it or I strongly desire it. However I may also have a genuine requirement of the source of my love. It also says that love may be the act of sexual intercourse or the sexual passion that fills us during intercourse. Or casually love may just be a strong like for something, The Texas Longhorns for example. Of course in tennis the word love is used to denote a score of zero so maybe love is really just nothing at all. Possibly love is like oxygen (like “The Sweet” said it was in the 70’s), invisible and hardly ever noticed, except when you don’t have access to it that is.

What I am coming up with here is that our English language makes it pretty hard or impossible actually to clearly define love. I have many more questions about what it is based on this research than I have legitimate answers. This is starting to make me think that this love thing must be a pretty big deal because God has done a great job of concealing the truth behind it. It appears that we as humans are simply running around acting on a rudimentary definition of a vital foundational principal. Is it any wonder that the kingdom we are building is crumbly? Dust everywhere and large potholes with bottomless natures abound.

On a side note: For a really great investigation into the word love, Rob Bell has a NOOMA on the subject titled “Flame” to say I recommend it would be like saying I recommend lungs.

So here is where I am. I am on a journey to lay a foundation for my life that is rooted in Christ, who is the physical manifestation of divine truth/ kingdom creating principal. I am searching out and acquiring the essential elements that are required. On this journey I have been given a map and told that love is the first location to which I must travel to directly follow a narrow road. Love it seems is elusive and hides itself under a mountain of human attempts to apprehend it. So I guess that is where I will look. Underneath the humanity that provides the topography of my map to love.

When you get right down to it that is what the referenced scripture says isn’t it? Love exists down under the humanity of this present darkness. It keeps no record of our shortcomings, it is patient with us, it has no expectations of its own, it promotes an atmosphere in which faith grows and is fertile with hope. It endures all things wasting no time crying injustice but rejoicing in the truth. When the time comes that our understanding of it becomes more complete and accurate then our partial understanding of it loses its influence. Best of all it will be with us always, and given its importance that is a terrific promise on which we can build.

So today right where you are, think of those others…, you know the ones. Think of the way in which love has blessed them and the way in which inaccurate and misdirected attempts at love have wounded them. Think of the profound healing power that love has to restore them. Think of our Christ who came in love to be love and the way in which He is the cornerstone of the Kingdom. You are loved and you are so important to God that He calls you His own and sends you out to be love to others. I don’t know if that helps with our definition but I do know that it helps me to define who I am and will be. For that I am grateful.