Broken By Love

I thought it would be a good idea that it would make me a better person and so I began. I began by memorizing 1 Corinthians 13 first in the King James version, “Love suffers long, and is kind.” I tried it in another version,” Love is patient, love is kind.” I tried it in still another version, “Love is always patient, love is always kind.” But it didn't make me a better person it just pointed out again and again that I wasn't really loving.

“Love is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not insist on its own way, is not provoked, does not keep a record of wrongs,” I memorized, I meditated, I became convicted that what I thought was love wasn't. As I looked at this picture of perfect love it became a mirror into with I could look and see God more clearly as well as myself. I was jealous, I found many creative ways to brag. I knew how often I insisted my own way in my relationship to my husband. But what really broke me was that love is not provoked and does not keep a record of wrongs. “Love does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth” conviction.

Then came the crescendo of impossibilities. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.”What breaks you and brings you to your knees? For me it was memorizing, and meditating on 1 Corinthians 13. I wanted to use it to make me a better person God used it to show me that I wasn't even good in the first place. The crescendo built until at last I heard the truth, “Love never fails.”

Broken shattered fragments of who I thought I was lay all about me. But then I remembered something else, “For this is what the high and lofty One says—he who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in the high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.” Isaiah 57:15 Then I knew the truth this love was the love God ha for me.

Lord Jesus, thank You for showing me what the love of God looks like, “This is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” 1 John 4:10