Love is patient and kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not arrogant. – 1 Corinthians 13:4
Perhaps the most famous tapestry in the world is one on display in Bayeux, France, depicting the conquest of England by William, the Duke of Normandy, in 1066. It is not like tapestries such as the Lady and the Unicorn seen on many greeting cards but is an embroidered “documentary” on the Battle of Hastings that changed England forever. Nearly 230 feet long and 20 inches tall, it contains 58 scenes of the war. Legend says it was embroidered by Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror, and her ladies of court.
Chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians is often called the Love Chapter. These eloquent verses are frequently read at wedding ceremonies as illustrations of the character of love. In English, the words about love are seen as predicate adjectives. However, in the Greek, the words are verbs—actions. The characteristics of love are meant to be applied. As your life unfolds, and as you practice the behaviors that are motivated by love, stitches are embroidered on your life’s history tapestry. From Earth’s perspective, you may see a bunch of loose yarns, knots, and twists, but as God looks from heaven, He sees a beautiful portrait being developed.
Treat others with patience and kindness, be content and humble, show courtesy, politeness, and sensitivity with an even temperament, care for the needs of others, rejoice in truth and righteousness, selflessly bearing all things, trusting, hoping, and persevering. Such love comes from continually seeking and yielding to the direction of the Holy Spirit in your life. Pray for the judges and justices in America’s courts to practice such Godly traits as they weave the nation’s history through their rulings on cases before them.
Today’s Verse: 1 Corinthians 13:4
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Recommended for further reading: 1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
All Scripture quotations and audio are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
