How Important is Love?

There is a new song that I’ve been hearing on K-Love that talks about how important love is. At the end of the song, a man quotes 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 from The Message Bible. The more I meditate on these verses, the more I realize how important it is to love. I know that you have probably read them a million times, but I’m going to share them with you so you can marvel with me about absolutely nothing mattering if we don’t love.

“If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.”

I don’t want to be bankrupt, but yet I know that I do not love nearly enough. That is my prayer, that God would touch my heart that has been bruised and broken and help me to reach out to others in love. And in case you (we) need a refresher about what love looks like:

   Love never gives up.

   Love cares more for others than for self.

   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

   Love doesn't strut,

   Doesn't have a swelled head,

   Doesn't force itself on others,

   Isn't always "me first,"

   Doesn't fly off the handle,

   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

   Doesn't revel when others grovel,

   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

   Puts up with anything,

   Trusts God always,

   Always looks for the best,

   Never looks back,

   But keeps going to the end.