If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but another noise maker.
If I speak theologically with power, revealing all divine mysteries, knew everything about everything, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m still useless and irrelevant.
Or if I had the spiritual gift of prophecy and knew all about what is going to happen in the future, but didn’t love others, what good would it do?
If I give everything I own to the poor or even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, it would be of no value whatever.
So, no matter what I say,
what I believe,
and what I do,
I’m bankrupt without love.
Love never gives up, it is very patient and kind.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself or desires on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Is never on the side of injustice,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Always looks for the best,
always hopes for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies.
Dynamic charismatic speech will disappear,
Spiritual gifts and abilities, like third eye knowing and praying in tongues, will end;
Science and understanding will reach its limit.
We know only a portion of the truth, and what we know about The Great Spirit is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.
It’s like this: when I was a child I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child does. But when I became an adult, my thoughts grew far beyond those of my childhood, and now I have put away those trivial pursuits.
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as the I AM sees us, knowing directly just as we are known!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best and most important of the three is love.
1 Corinthians 13