One day when I was 15 or 16, I was having a tiff with my younger sister Jessica in the kitchen while my mom was trying to talk on the phone. This was in the days before cordless phones, so the phone cord kept my mom stuck in the room with the two of us at the kitchen counter arguing in loud voices.
Mom put her hand over the phone and said, “Both of you! I want you to go to your rooms and look up 1 Corinthians 13. Write it out and starting with verse 4, wherever it refers to ‘love,’ substitute your own name.”
I went to my room and opened my Bible.
I came to verse 4 and wrote “Erik is patient.”
Aargh!
Then… “Erik is kind.”
That didn’t work either.
I thought, Is there anything in this list that fits me?
I hadn’t displayed any of those qualities when I was needling my sister and getting her upset.
It was very convicting.
What St. Paul wrote
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 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 do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
“4 Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
“8 Love never fails.
But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
“13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13 NIV).
Today’s prayer
Lord, change me. Help me put aside my childish ways. Help me learn to love. Amen.
©2019 by Becky Cerling Powers
Reprint with attribution only (www.beckypowers.com)
You can find more family stories from Becky Cerling Powers in Laura’s Children: the hidden story of a Chinese orphanage and My Roots Go Back to Loving and other stories from “Year of the Family” in the Bookstore
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