Love Abides

March 2^nd 

Today in church the epistle reading was the famous passage starting at 1 Corinthians 13: 1, “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal…”

Tears immediately welled up in my eyes. The passage is often read at weddings, but it would be a misreading of Paul’s words to view them as a description exclusively, or even primarily, of romantic love (the word used in the Latin version of the New Testament, caritas, expresses the Christian conception of the love of God and the love of one’s fellow humans). This passage speaks to me of the outpouring of God’s love for humanity, but also of the ability of the human heart to experience and express limitless love.

Why did the tears appear at this moment? Probably because so many of the verses made me think of K.B. and her open, generous heart. “Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude; it is not arrogant or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong but rejoices in the right.” K.B.’s life was a model of total commitment to a positive and life-affirming understanding of love. Many of us who were close to her feel that we were fortunate to have been blessed by the friendship of someone who focused on the best in us and loved us despite our flaws.

Then, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…” If I hadn’t been in the choir when this was being read, I think I would have yielded to the impulse to cry at this point. The love we felt for each other never ends; it will continue to be a bond between us. It will help me go on, to bear the loss of such a dear friend, to endure the shock and the pain.

“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.” The mystery of what Heaven is like, what her new reality is something that is still challenging for me. The promise that eventually I will have that clarity, that there will be a reunion of some sort, does provide a degree of consolation.

“So faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Love abides. Love is the greatest of these three, and it abides. Perhaps this is the lesson I need to take away from this wound to the heart.

Love abides.