A friend of mine gave a two-minute talk yesterday.
When he spoke the following words, he did it with such sincerity and compassion for the people he was addressing that you could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. I think more than a few of us had tears in our eyes.
Love is patient and kind.
Love is not jealous, or boastful, or proud or rude.
It does not demand its own way.
It is not irritable,
it keeps no record of wrongs.
It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out.
Love never gives up,
never loses faith,
is always hopeful,
and endures through every circumstance.
My challenge for this week is:
Love is not irritable. It keeps no record of wrongs.
I'll keep you posted on how I do.
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10 comments:
Talk about convicting! I've been praying about this a lot lately. About my irritibility and how I tend to be irritible with nobody BUT my husband...the person I love the MOST! So I'll work on it right alongside you
My husband and I have an unspoken pact about leaving the past where it is. Since he is a recovering alcoholic, it is important for us to focus on one day at a time, one step at a time, not dwell on past mistakes but learn from them.
Geez, there's a lot I could say about this. So I'll simply say, once something is forgiven, it's forgiven. It's hard to look forward and find your direction when someone keeps looking back.
Great post today!
A wonderful challenge. I'm sure you'll do great!
I love that passage from Corinthians, the foundation for our initimate relationships. Love. The bravest thing any of us could hope to do!
It's a beautiful passage. I just read what Tamika wrote and I like what she said.
I hope you have a wonderful week!
This is one of those passages that can be miss-used. "Endures all things" does not mean abuse. Sometimes, you have to forgive and remember.
Mary, that's a good reminder. Sometimes, abuse can mean that love only endures by changing its *type,* if you know what I mean. Love for a violent and dangerous spouse must be of a different kind than love for a non-violent spouse. Love for an abusive parent cannot be intimate and personal like love for a non-abusive parent. Instead, it becomes part of our effort to love *everyone,* even those whose behavior we abhor. There's always a way to turn a self-destructive love into a non-self-destructive kind. Whether or not a relationship can survive between two parties depends on BOTH, not one.
Hmmm....well-timed here too, Rosslyn, even though I didn't get here right away. Maybe I needed a day to pass to be fully ready for the reminder myself. For me right now, though, there is less grudge, and more just plain hurt, and that feels even harder to work around at the moment, because there's no anger, just sad emptiness. You've certainly brought forth some strong emotion through this small post. No one said love would be easy all the time, right?
Rosslyn, thank you so much for affirming that. I worried once I'd posted it, but you explained it so well. I hope it helps someone. It helped me.
Frankly, this is a tough one, keep no record of wrongs. Self-defensive tendencies urge us to remember so we won't be hurt again. The Bible often calls us to do what is unnatural. But, we are better for it.
I'd like to know more about the circumstances in which your friend read this passage. Wed. night devotional after Bible class? In a tense meeting between friends, brothers, church leaders? At a wedding? Being a speaker I like knowing about the "rhetorical moment."
Good post.
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