Love

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

13 If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body ^[a]to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, ⁵ does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, ⁶  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; ^7 [b] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
⁸ Love never fails; but if there are gifts of ^[c] prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part; ¹⁰ but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. ¹¹ When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I ^[d]became a man, I did away with childish things. ¹² For now we see in a mirror ^[e]dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known. ¹³ But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the ^[f]greatest of these is love.

Jesus was the beginning of the new order, the new covenant that God made with us.  Jesus is love personified.  He walked in all facets of it and He continues to do so.  I am lucky on a day that I'm walking in a few of them.  

What is this love anyway?  It requires that pretty much everything we knew to be love before Christ be torn apart and reconstructed based upon the blue print laid out in the word, in 1 Corinthians 13.  Love is patient.  Patient translates to "far feeling" or "long spirited" in the Greek.  I take that to mean you love beyond what is in front of you, whether it be someone upset with you or being impatient with you.  Love is kind, translated, to show yourself useful or act benevolently.  So, if you are lazy, you are not demonstrating love.  And the list goes on.  But what am I getting at here?  That even though I'm going through some things, the test is will I still love?  Can I still love through it?  If I can manage to even do those first two things, I have accomplished something.  Even if my heart aches and I want to be angry, if I can still love past what is right before me, I can see Jesus - because he is love personified.