Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
1 Corinthians 13:8 NIV
If you are anything like me, words are important to you. We craft them, we dwell on them, we labor over them, we ponder their significance. At times we use them wisely to lift up and bring life and at others we use them with reckless abandon and let the consequences of our rashness fall where they may. Words are beautiful, they are terrible, they are weak, they are strong, they are powerful, but they are not without limitation. They are constrained within the thought that created them and the thought that receives them. They have a beginning and an end.
Even divine language, the speaking of tongues, has a limit. And the words of our future, the prophetic comes to its own end. But love, love goes on.
You see love is transcendent. It is words but it is greater than words. It is the actions of our hands but it is more than actions. At its best it is a human incarnation of a divine expression. Just as Christ come as a man is the divine made flesh, love, in its truest form is the flesh made divine. Do not misunderstand me, we are not Christ, we are not divine (we are not even clean except by that which Christ has made us), we are but a dim reflection. Yet whenever God’s intent is expressed through us, it is a holy moment and God’s divinity is at work through us and in us.
Love is transcendent. When words fail, love prevails. When actions reach their end, love goes on.
How then should this awareness effect us?
It should give us pause to consider the condition of our heart before we choose our words or choose to consider the words given us by others. It should give us pause to examine our heart before we choose a course of action or we respond to the actions of those around us. Because love outlives and outworks them all. If we are to spend time and energy on any thing, should it not be the things that go on forever. Should it not be on the things that bring life to us all.
At times this examination will call us to bring words that we might otherwise have left silent. And at times it will leave silent that which we would prefer to throw in another’s face. And likewise our actions. And at times this reflection will lead us to repentance from the stone that has quietly and surreptitiously replaced our heart. If we are wise, church some of the first and last words we use each day will be as the psalmist wrote “create in me a pure heart oh God, and renew a right spirit within me”. These words too will pass but the effect of a heart filled with love will ring on forever.
Love beyond words
Stephen Hickson