Love is Patient: a Valentine's Day reflection

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

 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 rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears.  When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.  For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

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

1 Corinthians 13

Right before this passage Paul gives a listing of spiritual gifts and an explanation of how those gifts are used for God's glory as part of the body of Christ.  Immediately before these verses Paul says that we ought to "eagerly desire the greater gifts," then he tells us that he is going to show us "the most excellent way."  What Paul is telling us is that love is the ultimate spiritual gift that we should all desire.  He then sets before us an explanation about how and why doing everything with love is the most excellent way.  He tells us that if we use the gifts of the spirit, but do not use them out of love, then they are meaningless.  Without love all of our actions become empty and hollow.  Without love, life ceases to have meaning.

Then we get to the part where Paul defines what love is (and what it isn't).  Paul begins by telling us that love is patient.  As a 27 year old man who is unmarried and who has never really been in a long-term serious relationship I know all too well how patient love can be.  I have gone through seasons in my life where I greatly desire to be in a relationship and want to get married soon, and other seasons where I am perfectly content being single and think it would be fine if I never marry.

As a minister I have performed many weddings in recently years and have seen most of my closest friends get married.  I sometimes wonder why they have found love while I haven't yet.  Then I read this passage and am reminded that love is patient.  I've seen many people rush into relationships, declare their love after only a few shorts weeks, and get married after only months of dating.  While relationships started in such haste can work, most do not.  Why?  Because their love was not patient.

It is in the times when I most desire female companionship that I most need this reminder.  It is in those moments when I catch an old episode of Boy Meets World or watch (500) Days of Summer and long for the type of romance that Hollywood dreams up that I remember that love doesn't just happen.  I am reminded that love is patient and that I need to be patient in order to find love, just as God was patient with me.

Most of all on this day I am reminded that the greatest love comes from God himself.  He is patient with me every day.  He has been patient with humanity.  When His greatest creation sinned and turned away from Him He didn't give up or destroy everything and start over.  He just loved us.  He was sad and at times angry, but He loved us through it all.  He loved us so much that He sent His son, His one and only son Jesus, to the earth to die in our place.  Anytime I feel unloved all I have to do is look to the cross and see God's arms stretched out to know what love is.  In that act of giving up his life for mine I am shown what love is.  God shows His love to us through His patient desire and longing for us to return to Him.

There are times, like the times when I want to rush into being in love, that I need to sit back and be loved by my creator.  I need to let God's love wash over me, conquer me, and consume me.  It is in those moments that I need to be overwhelmed by God's live.  God's love isn't just a feeling or a nice emotion, it is an all-encompassing, reckless, irrational abandonment of self for others.  It is the most selfless action ever.  It is the cross, forgiveness, and patience.

On this Valentine's Day I hope that this passage serves as a reminder to all of us that God loves us beyond what we can even imagine and that love cannot be rushed because true love is patient.