What's love got to do with it?

The last time I went to church one of the scripture readings was I Corinthians 13: 1-13. I have been thinking about that passage for awhile now, since mom's funeral to be exact. But the version I have been reading is from The Message.

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I do not love, I have gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I am bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut. Doesn't have a swelled head, Doesn't force itself on others, Isn't always "me first," Doesn't fly off the handle, Doesn't keep score of the sins of others, Doesn't revel when others grovel, Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, Puts up with anything, Trusts God always, Always looks for the best, Never looks back, But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies, Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled. We don't yet see things clearly. We are squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the clears and the sun shines bright! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

I have been thinking a lot of loving someone versus being "in-love" with them and what that means. Sometimes I think love is a temporary madness, erupting like an earthquake and then subsiding. The being in-love feeling. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. A person has to work out whether the roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. (true love) That to me is what love is all about. Being in-love with someone is the breathlessness, the excitement, the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. But love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away. It is both an art and a fortunate accident.

I want the kind of love the two of you had for each other. There may have been times during your 57 years together, that the feeling of being "in-love" came and went but I believed you really loved each other. Your roots grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from your branches you found that you were one tree not two. That is the kind of love I hope to find. And while I feel lonely now, I trust God will lead me to a person who I can grow with into one tree.

My next post will talk about what I have learned from the grandkids about love that I can carry over into my next relationship.

Love is everything. That is what love has to do with it. Without it we are nothing.

"It is so easy, to think about love, to talk about love, to wish for love, but it isn't always easy to recognize love, even when we hold it...in our hands."