Think, Act, Be Day 44: I Corinthians 13:1-13
Love endures all things.
He was the unlikeliest of heroes. According to USA Today, he was just waiting at a subway station for a train. As he did, Wesley Autrey saw Cameron Hollopeter in a seizure; and Autrey stepped into action. He pulled Hollopeter away from the tracks to prevent him from falling into the path of an oncoming train. But the brief rescue operation turned heroic. Hollopeter fell onto the tracks anyway; and with the bright lights of a train approaching, Autrey left his girls, covered the man, allowing the train to pass over both of them. Both survived; the train barely brushing the top of Autrey’s cap. As Mr. Hollopoter realized what was going on, he asked Mr. Autrey, “Who are you?” He replied, “Someone who just saved your life.”
Autry demonstrated two qualities that Paul says about love in Corinthians 13. Love makes us who we are. When we become believers, we are nothing that is no-thing without love. Love is like the bloodline of the believer. Secondly, love works hard. There is nothing simple or easy about love. You don’t have to rescue someone from an oncoming train to understand the gritty work of being patient, kind, and free from jealousy.
It’s not heroic work. It’s just what it means to follow Jesus and to save a life.
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1-13