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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (ESV)Søren Kierkegaard: , *Works of Love*:
"Love is not an attribute of the lover but an attribute of the beloved. It is not something we possess and direct outward; it is the discovery that the other already places a claim upon us that we did not create and cannot extinguish. The one who loves believes all things -- not because love is naive, but because love refuses to make the final judgment about another person. Love hopes all things, not because the evidence supports hope, but because love has pledged itself to the future of the beloved before the future has arrived."
Jonathan Edwards: , *Charity and Its Fruits*:
"Heaven is a world of love. The very essence of the divine nature is love, and the Spirit of God who dwells in the saints is a Spirit of love. All the gifts of the Spirit, all knowledge, all faith, all outward acts of sacrifice -- these are the scaffolding. Love is the building. And God will not dwell in scaffolding forever. The day will come when knowledge passes away and tongues cease. What remains is what was always at the center: love, and the God who is love."
Ambrose of Milan: (c. 339-397), *Letter to the Church at Vercellae*:
"Nothing is more useful than to be loved, nothing more pleasant than to clasp another in the bonds of sincere affection. For love is the bond of perfection, the fulfillment of the law, the covering of offenses, the healing of divisions. If you wish to know how great is the power of love, consider that God first loved us when we were not yet lovable, and so taught us how to love. Love, therefore, is of God. God is its author; Christ is its teacher. And what He taught in words He sealed by His death, so that we might learn to love one another as He loved us."
Richard Foster: , *Celebration of Discipline*:
"The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people. The classical disciplines of the spiritual life call us to move beyond surface living into the depths. They invite us to explore the inner caverns of the spiritual realm. They urge us to be the kind of people who can gaze upon a field of blooming flowers and see beyond the colors to the God who made them -- and then, having seen, to love the neighbor we have ignored. The disciplines are not the goal; they are the means by which we are placed before God so that He can transform us. And the transformation He works is always, finally, into love."
If love is not something you feel but something you do -- what person today needs your action, not your affection?
Musonius Rufus: , *Lectures* (Fragment 14, "On Training"):
"Practice is more important than theory. A man may speak well about the good life and still not live it. But the one who has trained himself to act well -- to bear hardship without complaint, to treat others justly, to master his appetites -- this man will not need to say much. His life will speak for him. Therefore do not be satisfied with learning principles alone. Go and live according to them, and let your actions bear witness to what you have understood."
St. Clair, MI: -- Mist, +56°F, Humidity: 94%, Wind: ↘ 6 mph