| Beth E. Westcott

Our fifty-first wedding anniversary and recent current events brought 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter, to my mind. We included the reading of I Corinthians as part of our wedding ceremony.

Have you ever tried to define love? We often think of love as a warm, positive feeling. I suppose in a way it is. But when we examine I Corinthians 13, we discover that love is an active verb.

Two major events in my life challenged me to think of love as more than a feeling: getting married and becoming a parent. These two events showed me much about myself, not all pleasant.

1Corinthinas 13 teaches us that love is an active verb, demonstrated by what we do, not just by what we say (although it’s nice to have someone say the words to us and mean it).

God’s Word says it so much better than I can.

1 Corinthians 13 NKJV “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish tings. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”

See if you can pick out the actions of love in this Scripture passage.

Beth E Westcott