Thoughts of Grace

Christian love—the highest and best gift

13 ^1-3 If I speak with the eloquence of men and of angels,
but have no love,
I become no more than blaring brass or crashing cymbal.
If I have the gift of foretelling the future and hold in my mind
not only all human knowledge but the very secrets of God,
and if I also have that absolute faith which can move mountains,
but have no love, I amount to nothing at all.
If I dispose of all that I possess, yes,
even if I give my own body to be burned,
but have no love, I achieve precisely nothing.

⁴ This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience—
it looks for a way of being constructive.
It is not possessive:
it is neither anxious to impress
nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.

^5-6 Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.
It is not touchy.
It does not keep account of evil
or gloat over the wickedness of other people.
On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.

^7-8a Love knows no limit to its endurance,
no end to its trust,
no fading of its hope;
it can outlast anything.
It is, in fact,
the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.

All gifts except love will be superseded one day

^8b-10 For if there are prophecies
they will be fulfilled and done with,
if there are “tongues” the need for them will disappear,
if there is knowledge it will be swallowed up in truth.
For our knowledge is always incomplete and
our prophecy is always incomplete,
and when the complete comes,
that is the end of the incomplete.

¹¹ When I was a little child
I talked and felt and thought like a little child.
Now that I am a man
my childish speech and feeling and thought
have no further significance for me.

¹² At present we are men looking at
puzzling reflections in a mirror.
The time will come when we shall see
reality whole and face to face!
At present all I know
is a little fraction of the truth,
but the time will come when I shall know
it as fully as God now knows me!

¹³ In this life we have three great lasting qualities—
faith, hope and love.
But the greatest of them is love.

Consider love . . . Today
With my prayers, desiring yours, Leslie