2013 is just about finished. It’s been a year of defining priorities, on a national, as well as a personal level. I found for myself, that the more I thought and wrote about the downward spiral our nation and our American society is on, the more distracted and depressed I became … and that is unacceptable!
So I’m returning to what I KNOW!
What’s important to me? LOVE! Not so much the mushy, sentimental kind of stuff that’s built on emotion, or the lusty “can’t get enough sex,” but the gutsy, enduring stuff that fights through the junk of life. Love is much more than an emotion or our sex drive. It is sometimes emotional. Love and lust are two completely different things.
Love is a decision. It’s an act of our will to commit our energy to the support, the encouragement, the best interest of the one(s) we love.
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 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. 3 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.
4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 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. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.
11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 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.
13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 NKJVHave you noticed that many times we attach little things to our love … little things like EXPECTATIONS, CONDITIONS, or PREREQUISITES? Maybe you don’t, but I’ve found myself doing that, even to those I love the most!
My New Year’s Prayer is that I would remove the strings and simply, LOVE … my children, my neighbors, and those who share my community and nation, and find ways to Live that Love. Maybe, just maybe if people start to see LOVE, they will stop seeking destructive behaviors and attitudes.
Care to join me?
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