Daily Devotion February 14--Love

February 14

I Corinthians 13: 4-7

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,
Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;
Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;
Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

If I asked you to define love in two or three sentences, could you do it?  Could you do it adequately?  It seems that no matter how we try to define love, we just always come up lacking.  But even if we can't define it, we know that we need it.  We need to get love from and give love to someone.

Here in this verse we are given some pretty tough guidelines as to what love does and does not do.  I often hear these verses at wedding ceremonies.  But even in new love we fail at meeting all these standards.

In the KJV,  "charity" is used while other versions use "love".  If you will give me a little freedom today, I will write this verse based on Strong's concordance as a guide.  This is what we are to do:

Love is to persevere patiently and bravely and is to show one's self as mild, love does not envy or burn with hatred or anger, love does not boast about itself, is not proud or boastful; does not act in an unbecoming manner, does not look out only for his/herself or put his/herself first, does not quickly rise to anger, does not take into account those bad things, is not joyful over injustice, but is joyful over whatever is true in a matter, protects and preserves everything,  places confidence in everything, trust everything, takes everything patiently.  Then the first part of verse 8 says Charity never faileth.  This is saying Love never falls, falls out of, perishes.

I think that the last part may be where many people fall short.  People say they fell out of love with their partner.  But never once did Jesus say He would love us as long as...(Fill in with whatever it is you felt was wrong in your partner.)  Jesus loves us all the time in all these ways.  We are to love the same way those people with whom we interact.  We can be so thankful that in Romans 5:5 "...the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us."  That is the only way we are able to love as we should.

As we go through this day, let us love like Jesus.  Let us do all we can to exemplify the love found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  Love to all!