Since earliest times people have asked the great question: What is the supreme good? You have life before you. You can only live it once. What is the noblest object of desire, the supreme gift to covet?
We have been accustomed to be told that the greatest thing in the religious world is faith. That great word has been the keynote for centuries of the popular religion; and we have easily learned to look upon it as the greatest thing in the world. Well, we are wrong. If we have been told that, we may miss the mark. In the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Paul takes us to Christianity at its source, and there we see, ‘The greatest of these is love.’
It is not an oversight. Paul was speaking of faith just a moment before. He says, ‘And if I have all faith, so that I can remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing’. So far from forgetting, he deliberately contrasts them, ‘Now abideth faith, hope, love’, and without a moment’s hesitation the decision falls, ‘The greatest of these is love’.
- Henry Drummond “The Greatest Thing in the World”
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5 comments:
i agree whole heartedly! And i think that by accepting God's everlasting and unconditional love for us, he gives us the capacity to give this to others. Alone, humans cannot love unconditionaly, but only with the love of our God pouring into our hearts. But love is a risk, so we must learn to "love without fear" knowing that we simply cannot hold back.
Well said Cinda.
Bri, what valuable lessons you are learning there.Imagine a world motivated and sustained by love. God opens us to such a possibility becoming reality.
Being in Japan has caused me to reflect on simliar issues. What really is love? And how can we actuallize it?
i have to email you. i am using my powers of will to refrain from doing anything other than that at this moment.
i think you and i read this particular text (or section of next) in the same way.
more to come in the form of electronic mail. another day another time.
keep the peace, gena.
A Celtic Creed: "We agree that Faith working by Love, not Faith without Love, is the means and condition of humanity's justification before God."
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