I am bankrupt without 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.

Love never gives up

Love cares more for others than for self

Love doesn’t strut

Doesn’t have a swelled head

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

Love never dies.

 Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit.  We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete.  But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant.  When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

We don’t yet see things clearly.  We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.  But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!  We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation:  Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.