Something or Nothing?

S - 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (ISV): "If I speak in the languages of humans and angels but have no love, I have become a reverberating gong or a clashing cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can understand all secrets and every form of knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains but have no love, I am nothing. Even if I give away everything that I have and sacrifice myself, but have no love, I gain nothing."

O - The truth is we can do a lot of things that genuinely bless others and simultaneously lack love.  Such acts are "something" to others but in reality are nothing to us and (according to Scripture) are actually leading us to become nothing (cf. ojvdei~: not even one thing).  Self-promotion, pride and arrogance, envy (i.e. competition) and a focus on appearances (how things look rather than how they actually are) all indicate a serious deficiency of love. This critical yet unseen factor, the love factor, is the key. Its lack guarantees an outcome no one really wants … gaining and becoming nothing.

A - As always, the point of this stellar insight is not for me to go around trying to determine another's motives or "love quotient". It is for me to be assessing, guarding and directing my own internal dynamics to the one who is Love and to be following him at all times.  Doing good is always good … but doing it in love will always end in a result larger than the sum of the parts.  Jesus wants me to believe and live in the truth that there really is NOTHING I can do today (and any day) that is more important than loving. 

P - Lord who is love,

Thank you for loving us/me first, most and for refusing to change your mind.  There is not one thing you've done or will ever do that is not completely inspired and sustained by love.  You are love. You are life.  Lord, please cause your life and love to come into and out of me so that all you've dreamt and planned for in my little sphere of existence will come to pass and that I may become all you've intended.  You lead and I follow.  I accept my primary assignment in this day: loving you with all my heart, mind, soul and strength and loving my neighbor as myself.  I do love you back and say lead on, I will follow unto the presence of love and the beauty of something rather than nothing.

Believing according to Jesus,

Steve