Love Is...

Even if you have never read the Bible or attended a worship service at church, you have probably heard the words of of 1 Corinthians 13....or at least some of them.  They are spoken at weddings, displayed through art, written on greeting cards....

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth.  Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends...faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I was reading some more of Crazy Love this morning and re-read that passage again.  Francis Chan suggested I put my name in place of "love" in the verses above.  So I did.  Some of what I read is true most of the time, but not all of the time....and some of what I read is not true very much of the time at all.  Wow.  None of us is perfect, but we should all keep challenging ourselves to be better people.  If we don't, we become stagnant and life and the blessings God has for us to enjoy can be wasted.  But there are some times that I don't even try to exhibit some of these characteristics of love.  Do I really endure all things?  Not without grumbling and complaining about them....not very gracefully at all sometimes....especially lately at work.  I definitely fail miserably when it comes to being thrown into a bunch of negativity.  It's like a sea of misery and most of the time I end up just about drowning in it.  Do I believe all things?  As one of my co-workers and friends would say, "Heck to the no!"  LOL  I just don't.  I don't trust people anymore like I used to trust.  I used to take the view that everyone was a genuine, nice person until they proved me wrong.  Now, much of the time I am not persuaded of anyone's goodness until they prove that they can be trusted.  What happened?  Life happened. 

We learn that some people will lie to us, therefore we do not believe all things.  We live in a fast-paced society, therefore patience is not always our best quality.  We learn that society believes more is better, therefore we sometimes find it difficult not to envy.  I could continue on, but the gist of it is this:

There will always be an explanation or excuse that we can legitimately make for NOT being able to put our names in place of "love." 

And the question is this: 

Are we gonna trudge through life blaming our lack of love on everyone and everything other than ourselves or are we gonna take a stand against apathy and try to be the best we can be? 

I think life is so much sweeter if we choose the second option. 

Go love on somebody today!  :)