The sun is shining and all around the villages folk are busy with plans for events, flower festivals, jubilee celebrations, in the midst of it all younger people are taking exams, preparing for study leave, anticipating work or further education.
The wedding season has begun and bells are ringing out on many a Saturday now as couples pledge their love and commitment one to the other.
A great deal has been written and sung about love, so sometimes it’s a challenge to find something different to say to those beginning the adventure of marriage, it helps to read again familiar verses from the Bible in different versions and one that has caught my eye this past week has been the familiar passage from St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians in the 13th chapter he sets out just what love is all about and no matter if it’s in the context of marriage or of life in general it’s a challenge to look again at God’s blue print for love in action.
How do we all stack up if judged against these words?
In the book ‘The Message’ this love is put in very ordinary language, it may not have the beauty of the older versions, but it is hard hitting in its challenge to us that love for example never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Isn’t always “me first”.
Doesn’t fly off the handle.
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others.
Doesn’t revel when others grovel, rather love takes pleasure in the flowering of truth.
Puts up with anything.
Trusts God always.
Always looks for the best.
Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.
Ok in theory that sounds fine...but perhaps the reality is a lot tougher when times are difficult, when you feel let down, when you feel anxious.
St Paul has an answer for us further on in the passage he recognises that we may feel that we are ‘squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.’
But he reassures us, ‘it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now’, until then, ‘we have three things to do to lead us toward that reality: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly so that in the more familiar versions we will find that... the greatest of these is love.’
So as the physical sun shines down on us perhaps we can re examine our attitude to love, have we slipped, have we lost sight of the reality that love in action can alter so much around us... when you are criticised or hurt by someone else remember this that Jesus died to let this love become a reality and knowing this... let love be your guide.
Peace and blessings.