1 Corinthians 13

Comment:

This is a popular reading for weddings, probably because this beautiful chapter really speaks for itself. It represents a ringing affirmation that love is not an obligation to be fulfilled, or a goal to be achieved. It is the truth of who we truly are.

We are all one with God, expressions of the divine, and the nature of the divinity we share is love. Paul here makes it crystal clear that even his own missionary work is meaningless if it is not being carried out in an energy of love. Spiritual characteristics—prophecy, speaking in tongues, religious training and knowledge—will come and go; they will last at best no longer than the span of a human life. Love endures forever. Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This is tricky.  It surely doesn’t mean “anything goes” when it comes to living a life and relating to others. Love may “believe all things,” for example, but it surely does not believe in its own opposite—a fear-based power of hatred. Yet love recognizes love in even the darkest of moments or experiences. Love knows that there is no place love is not; others may be ignorant of its presence, but it is as omnipresent as the Power of God because, indeed, it is the Power of God, everywhere present, always eager to express, available to us as we are willing to see it and claim it.   Blessings!

Rev. Ed