Yesterday, the angry God. Today, the God Who bends over backwards for us to avoid getting angry.
It’s ironic that so many marriage ceremonies include a reading of 1 Corinthians 13. While the chapter does include a poetic description of love’s attributes, it doesn’t stop there. Instead, it outlines the truth about love, namely how it reigns eternal while knowledge and tongues, a element of earthly ministry used to symbolize ministry as a whole, will end when our tenure on this planet ends. In doing so, it speaks of death. Male melodrama aside, a wedding and a funeral are quite different entities.
This love, this eternal love, is the one God shows us when He looks at our fumbling stumbling bumbling silly self-defeating self-destructiveness and sighs, yet loves us nonetheless. It’s the love that’s present when we’re wondering where it is amidst screaming bosses and sullen spouses and misbehaving children and overriding sorrow over far too many goodbyes and not nearly enough hellos. It’s the love that when we collapse at the foot of the cross, exhausted and defeated, says I’m here for you both nailed to the bloody wood and waiting for the day you come Home to Me.
It’s the love from Jesus that forgave those who tortured and executed Him.
We live in a world rife with fear and polluted by the pride of those who see free will as a license to declare themselves Ozymandias, equally oblivious to their own pending temporal demise. But when we look beyond the immediate, we see a reality of tangible love from without now within, one that sings with us when joy is present and comforts us through times of sorrow. This love is the one to which we ought to cling.
This love.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jerry Wilson and tkquincy, Palin Twibe. Palin Twibe said: via @Jerry_Wilson This Love http://tinyurl.com/y9lxsq5 #palin #tcot [...]