Blog
“What Is It?”
Categories: Christian life, family, loveWhen your child complains about the food you just spent an hour fixing for him and you don’t blow a gasket…
When your friend calls you in the middle of a great movie, but you answer anyway because you know she is going through a tough time…
When your neighbor throws a party, ten cars are parked across from your driveway, you are late for an appointment, you can barely squeeze your car out, and you choose to not even curse your neighbor in your heart…
When your spouse is hot on your case because you obviously failed to do what you should have done, and you could bring up that time last week that would cancel it out, but you choose to say instead, “Yes, Dear, I’m sorry…”
When your sister talks at you in that tone for the thousandth time today, and you decide to overlook it again…
When you try to have a tough conversation, and it’s not received well, but you choose to keep praying for the other person…
When you give your body and your time to bringing children into the world, keep them alive, take them to school and sports and the doctor and church and their friends’ houses, teach them to dress themselves and brush their teeth and make a sandwich and navigate friendships and drive a car, and they don’t seem to appreciate you as much as they should, but you keep doing it wholeheartedly…
When you still have a year before you’ll have that credit card paid off, and your friend at church tells you he just retired and is looking forward to seeing the world and doing all the exciting things, and you smile and genuinely rejoice with him…
When you are having a bad day, and someone comes to you with her own bad news, and you put your arm around her and cry with her without even bringing up your own miseries…
When you stumble off the path and collapse, and God listens to your cries for help, helps you to your feet, and puts you back on the right way, even though you just did the same thing yesterday…
When His enemies spat on Him, mocked Him, drove a thorny crown into His skull, beat Him over the head, viciously scourged Him, and forced Him to carry His own cross, and Jesus never once complained…
When He hung on the cross, and nasty little men yelled at Him to come down if He was the Son of God, and He could have pulverized them with a thought or a simple word, but instead He said, “Father, forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing…”
…that’s love.
1 Corinthians 13.4–8
