"Your life is an occasion. Rise to it!" - Mr. Magorium

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Love Really Is the Answer

I've talked a lot about the significance of love in healing. God is Love, and in loving thoughts and actions we find ourselves in His image and likeness. Below is one of my favorite biblical passages. It's all about love.

1 Corinthians 13 (New King James Version)
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

4 Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10 But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13 And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

In 1874 a Scottish minister named Henry Drummond gave a sermon entitled “The Greatest Thing In The World”. In this work he examines the passages cited above, and cites additional biblical authority for naming love as the greatest thing in the world.

When published, this work of Drummond's sold over 12 million copies. Today it stands out as a sentinel work of modern Christianity. And now it is apparently in the public domain. You can read or download copies of this wonderful meditation from numerous web cites. Here are links to a couple of them.

Henry Drummond Home Page

Project Gutenberg

Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. That's also one of my favorite passages. I remember one of the more modern traslations probably good News for Modern Man saying something along the lines of "Love does not rain on someone else parade."
    What's really been true for me is that any state otehr than love is a pretty crummy feeling and not one I want to spend time in.

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