Yesterday, my wife and I performed a wedding ceremony together. It was our first time ever doing one together. It was my first one in over 10 years. In the ceremony, the description of love in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8a is used, which is very common. Today, the entry from Chambers uses this same passage. He could have focused on many different facets of this passage, but he focused on a characteristic of this love, not found here, but rather alluded to in Galatians 5:22.
Spontaneity as a quality of love is what my wife has always wanted me to have with her (all you husbands out there know what I mean). But in the sense Chambers uses the term, he means it’s not something achieved by determined effort, but rather noticeable as I look back. Then I see that I was loving, kind, not boastful, not proud, enduring all sorts of things, and so on. By looking back over the path down which I’ve been led, I see where I have become more like my Master. I wish I would see more of those places, but I see more now than I have for many years.
Love, as Paul describes it in the letter to the Corinthians, is the greatest gift of the Spirit of my Master. Paul is quick to point out how much superior it is to tongues, prophecy, and knowledge specifically. He points out how love is not arrogant or self-inflated, which was the result of the afore mentioned gifts in the Corinthian Church. Paul is trying very diligently to help the church in Corinth see the answer to their problems is a deeper devotion and submission to Jesus, and less of a self-focus. In that city, everyone seeks to climb higher, faster, with more money and affluence, and they all want the attention of everyone else (sort of like Hollywood today).
This answer to problems, my problems is true for me today. When I submit my moments to Jesus, I will be surprised when I look back, to see where His qualities have shown through my own. When I focus on my Master instead of myself, I will experience something that I will be unable to notice in the present, but only as I look back over into the past to this time, just as Chambers said. I have experienced that. I do today. Today, though I also see where my cynical response to traffic in the car with my daughter yesterday was reflected back to me this morning. It is a poignant reminder of the frailty of my character, and the importance of further devotion to my Master. It’s not just my life being affected, but that of my daughter. I am teaching her improper responses to whatever does not go her way in her timing. I need to show her differently.
So, faith, hope, and love remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love. As I have said in a couple of sermons, faith will get me into heaven, but love enables me to bring friends. Hope forms the foundation of faith, faith creates the safe space to love, and love is the evidence of my Master’s work in me. I guess I have some devoting and focusing to do. I hope I will look back over today, and see the marks of my Master’s love. I believe He will make it so.
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