Tell Out My Soul

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant  or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;  it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Jesus taught us how to love saying, “love one another as I have loved you.” Here Paul tells us what love is and what it can do. If we love the way Jesus wants us to love, imagine what our world could be like. Imagine what our own lives would be like. According to Paul we can look at love, not just as a feeling or an ethos, but something other, something outside ourselves, like a physical thing, like a sculpture or other work of art. We can turn it around and look at it from all angles and just as we can see all the beautiful features of a piece of sculpture, we can look at love itself and observe how it manifests in our lives and the lives of others. Love displaces negative thoughts and feelings, replacing them with strength, faith and hope. Love gives and doesn’t take away.