If I speak using the language of Rob Bell and Doug Fields, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.1
If I have a years of youth ministry experience and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have hundreds of students in my youth group, but have not love, I am nothing.
If I give all my time to my church and surrender my body during youth group games, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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 empty programs, they will cease; where there are hollow relationships, they will be stilled; where there is indifference, it will pass away. For we know in part and we hope in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect 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 childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in the bumper of a 16-passenger van; 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... and overnight events. But the point is, the greatest of these is love.
- I got this idea from James McGrath's . I also found later, and any similarities are totally coincidental. [↩]
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