Keep your eyes open, hold tight to your convictions, give it all you've got, be resolute, and love without stopping.
(1 Corinthians 16.13-14, The Message)
In my meditations at Swaim Park after work today, the words love without stopping kept pouncing out at me. Eugene Peterson's dynamic translation obscures one of the main thrusts of this passage: the Apostle Paul tells the Corinthians to be courageous as men.
We're to be courageous in our obedience.
We're to be courageous in our purity.
We're to be courageous in our faith.
We're to be courageous in our hope.
And we're to be courageous in our love.
In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul gives an oft-quoted snapshot of the qualities of love (what it is and isn't). While this passage is quoted most often in weddings, the love Paul is speaking about isn't romantic love specifically but Christian love in general: it is the love God lavishes upon us, and it's the love we are to outwardly manifest to our friends, our families, our communities, our enemies. Because it's so overused (can I say that about scripture?), I usually just skim it. But Paul's command to be courageous in love turned my attention to that passage, and I replaced "love" with my name. The result is rather humbling:
Anthony never gives up. He cares more for others than for himself. He doesn't want what he doesn't have. He doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force himself on others, 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 grumble, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, put up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end.
I say it's humbling because I fail in so many ways.
But that's the sort of person I want to be.
A man who is known for his courageous love.
It's not something I can achieve on my own.
My prayer is that God's grace will achieve it in me.
I'm encouraged that it is His intention to do precisely that.
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