SCANDALOUS
June 1st, 2022
LOVE IS…Large and Incredibly Patient (vs 13:4)
1 Corinthians 13:8, 13, ‘Love never stops loving. It extends beyond the gift of prophecy, which eventually fades away. It is more enduring than tongues, which one day will fall silent. Love remains long after words of knowledge are forgotten…Until then, there are three things that remain: faith, hope and love—yet love surpasses them all. So, above all else, let love be the beautiful prize for which you run.’ (TPT)
Love never gives up. Sound familiar?
Adam & Eve have Eden as their back yard, their very own secret garden, created just for them. I think they became complacent and easily distracted, everything in their world so beautiful and peaceful. In fact, they were so comfortable, they could be naked and feel no shame. However, as soon as they disobeyed, they ran and hid; they hid from God Almighty, the God who had taken His very own breath and mixed it with dirt from the earth He made and formed them from a dream, so He had company, friends, fellowship, someone to hang out with. And when they disobeyed, and sin entered the perfect garden, they saw themselves as they were, not as God saw them, naked and perfect and complete; therefore, they ran and hid from Him, so He wouldn’t see them as they saw themselves. What He did? What love did? It sought them, pursued them, forgave them. In fact, love—a Holy God—sewed them clothes from fig leaves so they would no longer feel awkward, and they would stop feeling the need to hide.
God’s glory passed before Moses, but this Holy God placed Moses in the cleft of a rock and covered him with His hand so He could not be seen. Once He had passed by, He removed His hand so Moses could see His backside. Love so loved because mankind could not lay eyes on His holiness. It would be too much. Love so loved that God appeared not in an earthquake or wind or fire, but in a simple whisper because He is near and can be just that close to the humanity He formed. Love so loved that it pursued a man into the belly of a whale and caused walls to fall and used a common shepherd boy to birth the lineage Who would redeem the entire world. Love so loved, and was so very large and patient, that it saw the possible in the impossible, the probable in the improbable, dwelt among the average and messy and broken, climbed into barren wombs, virgin wombs, climbed trees to chase little men down, saw through all the smokescreens and waited out the unlovely and the lost and the orphan. Love so loved it never gave up. Because of this love, we now have forever, ETERNITY, to look forward to.
So many weddings happen every year during the month of June; so many ‘I do’s’ are spoken that eventually become ‘I don’t’s’, because we understand so little about love, God’s love, and the largeness of it, the patience of it. What would happen if we too loved like that and never gave up?
