What Love Does …
During February, the Month of Love, I’ve been focusing on what was written about love in the Bible’s Love Chapter. The swan photos I’ve used in each post are ones my husband Ron took. Swans are not only elegant birds, but because they mate for life, they often are seen as symbols of love. I wonder if the swans in this photo are loving their neighbors in the way only swans are designed to do, perhaps trying to protect a flock of ducks surviving winter’s cold.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but [Love] rejoices with the truth. [Love] always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (NIV)
In this final portion of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, love moves from being an adjective to becoming a verb.
We’ve learned that love is patient and kind. We also know it doesn’t boast, isn’t proud or dishonoring of others, and that love is neither self-centered nor angry.
Now, Paul stressed that what love does is rejoice with the truth; always protect; always trust; always hope; and always persevere. I like Eugene Peterson’s translation of these action steps in The Message.
[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.
Recently, a friend mentioned how much she’d enjoyed Bob Goff’s book, Love Does – Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World. I read this book several years ago, and if anyone can convince you that love is indeed a verb, I imagine Bob Goff would be the guy.
While searching the Internet for some quotes from this book, I discovered a website in which Bill Pence shared several of his favorite Goff quotes. These are not all from Love Does … but I think they’ll be thought provoking and give you a nice taste of this author’s perspective on the kind of love which reflects the heart of God and teachings of Jesus.
“God’s love for us doesn’t change on our worst days. Come to think of it, we can’t earn more of God’s love on our best days. We are simply loved by God, no matter what, and because of Jesus, God doesn’t define us by our mistakes.”
“I don’t think Bible verses were meant to be thrown like grenades at each other. They were meant for us to use to point each other toward love and grace and invite us into something much bigger.”
“I’ve realized that I used to be afraid of failing at the things that really mattered to me, but now I’m more afraid of succeeding at things that don’t matter.”
“Loving people means caring without an agenda. As soon as we have an agenda, it’s not love anymore.”
“It’s given me a lot of comfort knowing we’re all rough drafts of the people we’re still becoming.”
“There’s a difference between good judgment and living in judgment. The trick is to use lots of the first and to go a little lighter on the second.”
“We make loving people a lot more complicated than Jesus did.”
“Loving people the way Jesus did is always great theology.”
“Loving people we don’t understand or agree with is just the kind of beautiful, counterintuitive, risky stuff people who are becoming love do.”
“Don’t just love the people who are easy to love; go love the difficult ones. If you do this, Jesus said you’d move forward on your journey toward being more like Him.”
Blessings on your journey of loving more like Jesus,
