The Fruit Of...Love

Well, we've made it. Nine fruits in nine days and we are at the end of it. I hope I've caused you to think about them a bit and maybe to have looked at them differently than before. I know I've learned something about myself in writing about them. One quick note before I get on with my thoughts on love...all of today's quotes from the Bible come from 1 Corinthians 13. I highly recommend that you give the whole chapter a read today!

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. 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 with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

When you think of the word love, what or who do you think about? You probably think about your family right off the bat. You might have thought about Jesus. Maybe you put a couple of your favorite activities somewhere on your list. I'm sure we can all come up with a pretty good list of people and things that we would say we love, and I'll bet you that none of us would put the people who have wronged us on our lists but we're instructed to love them just the same as we love those closest to us. That passage up above tells us that it doesn't matter how Godly our actions look on the outside, if we don't have love in our hearts we have absolutely nothing, and we are absolutely nothing!

Pretty sobering for a guy like me who tends to get really ticked off when people act in ways with which I don't agree. We aren't just supposed to love those who make it easy for us to do so. If Jesus could sacrifice himself for all of us then what makes us think we are better judges of who is deserving of our love?

It isn't a persons actions that we're supposed to love, but their very being. Even when it isn't easy to do so, and maybe especially when it isn't easy to do so...that is when we need to turn the love on strongest. Everyone who has breath is but a single moment away from giving their life to Christ and He doesn't deal in degrees of sin. You are either forgiven and changed or you are not.

So allow the Holy Spirit to fill you with God's love. Allow yourself to let go of all of the things that verse up there says love is not and cling to the things that it tells you love is.