HOW DO YOU SPELL L-O-V-E? -- Devotional for February 14, Valentine's Day, from "Good Seeds"

I Corinthians 13:4-8
We know the Bible is not a textbook, and yet, whenever it speaks on a subject, what it says is right. In its pages we can find truth regarding nature (science), human nature (psychology), and God’s nature (theology), and it contains many lessons for our learning, for both mind and spirit. One of those is a spelling lesson. In First Corinthians 13 Paul spells out the word love, not with 4 letters, but with 16 metaphorical definitions. The Bible is often regarded as God’s Love Letter to us, and so it is. But here we find God’s guidelines for our love letters – our Valentine’s Cards – to one another. Here is The Love Chapter, translated (NAS), paraphrased (TM), and commented upon (SM)…
“Love…
(do we dare insert our own name in the place of this word?)
- is patient: never gives up – doesn’t keep looking at its watch.
- is kind: cares more for others than for self – is a “hands-on” love.
- is not jealous: doesn’t want what it doesn’t have – but wants very much, and hangs tenaciously onto, the gifts of God that it does have!
- does not brag: doesn’t strut – does not walk into a room saying, “Hey, here I am!” but rather, “Ah, there you are!”
- is not arrogant: doesn’t have a swelled head – doesn’t find it necessary to build itself up by tearing others down (or vice versa).
- does not act unbecomingly: doesn’t force itself on others – doesn’t get in your face or violate your space; understands timing and spacing.
- does not seek its own: isn’t always “me first” – is frugal with its own needs, just so it can spend freely and generously on others.
- is not provoked: doesn’t fly off the handle – tempers its temper.
- does not take into account a wrong suffered: doesn’t keep score of the sins of others – its mind “works pretty good to forget with!”
- does not rejoice in unrighteousness: doesn’t revel when others grovel – hates the fact that it loves to dig in the dirt, to grub up gossip!
- rejoices with the truth: takes pleasure in the flowering of truth – has a healthy fear of lying and liars, the destroyers of all that’s worthwhile.
- bears all things: puts up with anything – doesn’t take itself so seriously that it cannot live with adversity and laugh at inconvenience.
- believes all things: trusts God always – and doubts its doubts.
- hopes all things: always looks for the best – views all of life through God-colored glasses.
- endures all things: never looks back, but keeps going to the end – remembers that the best is always yet to come!
- never fails: never dies – will continue in heaven what it started here.