Thoughts for the Day

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. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

(Lectionary, New Revised Standard Version)

Thoughts

Paul says we have Faith, and Hope, but Love is the greatest. As Christians we have faith in God. We also have hope that Christ will return for a second time. But love is different. There is an old saying that goes like this:

• "The love in your heart wasn't put there to stay,
  Love isn't love till you give it away."

There is power in these words that can change the world. Love doesn't selfishly gather to itself, it unselfishly gives itself to the loved one. This is how God loved us; this is how the Son obeyed His Father; this is how Jesus chose to die for us to free us from our debt caused by sin. Always true love gives itself away.

Anne Frank saw this. She was a young 15 year old girl who hid with her family for two years in an office building in Amsterdam after the Nazis occupied the city. Finally betrayed, they were taken prisoner, and died in Belsen. However, in diary she wrote:

• “How lovely to think that no-one need wait a moment. We can start now, slowly changing the world….. Give of yourself, give as much as you can. And you can always give something, even if it is only kindness.”

There are many tales of how she helped those around her in the concentration camp, and of the love she bore for those other inmates. Love must start somewhere as St Teresa says:

“Christ has no body now on Earth but ours; no hands, but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes through which Christ looks with compassion on the world, ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good, and ours are the hands with which he is to bless all men.”

Father-God,
You call us to love others,
and in doing so to give love away.
Let us never forget that You first loved us,
and that Your Son, our Lord, rescued us
from our sin.
May we learn the true meaning of love
and discover how to give it away.
Amen.