Faithful Friday Devotion The Greatest of These Is Love

 I Corinthians 13: Love

And now these three remain : faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

I Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)

Good morning friends! I hope your week has gone well and you are enjoying these first hours of your Friday morning. Since we are so close to Valentine's Day, I thought an appropriate devotional for this morning would be the verse from I Corinthians about Love.

Love is such a used word in our language isn't it? In terms of Valentine's Day, it typically refers to romantic love although the card sellers have cards for every relationship from friends to school classmates to our pets! It has become more of a "fun" day to celebrate. As a teacher, I always enjoyed this fun aspect and the children decorating their Valentine boxes. And of course the actual day was filled with all sorts of excitement and a party with cookies and punch with everything red! It was fun but exhausting!

During Biblical times there was no such thing as Valentine's Day, of course, and if you read the full Chapter 13 you will see that Paul was focused on relationships in terms of love. Here is what Paul says in verses 3-7:

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.

I think of our world today and how, in so many ways, we seem to have gotten away from these Biblical thoughts about love. We don't always have to agree with one another. But we can still be civil and kind. 

Love takes work. And that work is not always easy. But a great place to start that work is through focusing on our relationship with God. Through prayer and reading God's word and building our own personal relationship with Jesus we can get there.

Blessings and Peace,

Debbie

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