If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
Learn the Art of Love
Today, you will learn the art of love, and you’ll go beyond yesterday’s ability to love.
First Corinthians 13:1–2 is read at virtually every wedding and every service that wants God’s perspective on love to be reclaimed. The passage says that if we speak with human excellence or with divine language, if we can reveal mysteries and move mountains but do not have limitless, selfless giving and compassionate motives at our center, we are simply making noise.
We all know people whose generosity of spirit is so great it gives us pause. Mother Teresa quieted even the atheistic world not with her profound words but with her weighty life of love. When she was asked about her life’s work lifting up the dying in the gutters of Calcutta, she said “Maybe if I didn’t pick up that one person, I wouldn’t have picked up forty-two thousand.”
Today, you will learn the art of love by selflessly giving your time and energy to one person at a time. When you speak to people, they will leave with a greater sense of God’s nearness and their own stature in His sight rather than being impressed with you. Today, love deeply, generously, and without reserve.
Prayer:
Lord of love, my time is precious to me, yet You made an entire lifestyle out of the interruptions that love welcomes. Give me the grace today to see the one, to see the few, to see the many who are waiting for me to live in love.
Dan Wilt, A Well-Worn Path: Thirty-One Daily Reflections for the Worshipping Heart (Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2013).
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