The Greatest of These

Love is patient, love is kind. Love is a whole mess of other things that are spelled out pretty clearly in one short chapter in a letter to the Corinthians. I've been fascinated by the concept of Love since I was in college. John says that God *is* love. That's a pretty big statement about God and love and it confounds and amazes me whenever I give it a good thinking. A friend of mine once said the thing he likes most about God is that he's powerful. It makes him happy to know that God could take anyone or anything in a fist fight. But power is just one of God's traits--his defining feature, the one that sums him up in one word is Love.

Lately I've been pondering what else John says about Love. He says that we don't really just love God, we only love him because he first loved us. Now that's a powerful statement about how we learn love. I don't think we're born knowing how to love. After all, the loving thing to do would be to let poor mom have a decent night's rest and not wake her up every two hours. Instead it has to be shown to us. I'm not sure I believe that we'd even understand it intellectually until we'd experienced it personally.

I'm reminded of the times when I just didn't get something until I actually saw it in action. For a long time I strugged with Calvinism and the doctrine of predestination. The details aren't really that important, but suffice it to say that I just didn't see how that doctrine could be correct simply because I'd never met someone who followed it and wasn't kind of a jerk. How can you just not care that people are going to Hell in the carpool lane just because God didn't choose them? Then I read a pamphlet about the doctrine that was written by someone who actually seemed like a nice person. And even though nothing intellectual changed in my understanding about the topic, I was suddenly able to belive it. (Someday maybe I'll write about what I think now).

For the last two weeks, my wife and I have been helping to run summer camps in South Africa for kids from the townships and squatter camps. Our goal is to show the kids the hope and love found in God. These kinds of short term projects are sometimes hard to justify in my mind: the thousands of dollars spent, the time given up, if nothing else the ridiculously long time spent in a confining, uncomfortable airplane seat. But when you realize that the only way to teach someone about the love of God is to *show* it to them, the budget starts to balance. After all, the flight from heaven is longer, I'm sure, than the flight from San Francisco and an entire childhood lived through makes the jetlag look like nothing. And that's just God coming here. It's not even the part where he shows us what love really is: giving up your life for another.

So what is Love? I'd define it for you, but you won't get it. I'd show you if I could, but even then it would just be a glimpse of what love really is. You must experience it for yourself. And you can.