The Most Excellent Way
"The invitation of love is not a proposal for self-improvement or any other kind of achievement. Love is beyond success and failure, doing well or doing poorly . . . Love is a gift." Gerald May
"From God's other known attributes we may learn much about His love. We can know, for instance, that because God is self-existent, His love had no beginning; because He is eternal, His love can have no end; because He is infinite, it has no limit; because He is holy, it is the quintessence of all spotless purity; because He is immense, His love is an incomprehensibly vast, bottomless, shoreless sea before which we kneel in joyful silence and from which the loftiest eloquence retreats confused and abashed." A.W. Tozer
"We should always remember that love is the highest gift of God. All of our revelations and gifts are little things compared to love . . . Settle in your heart that from this moment on you will aim at nothing more than the love described in 1 Corinthians 13. You can go no higher than this." John Wesley
These days, excellence rules! People, as well as organizations, willingly fork it over for excellence. Bring on the excellent food, excellent décor, excellent cars, excellent vacations, excellent productivity, excellent people skills, excellent education and excellent profitability. And beware: average, ordinary, adequate and acceptable can leave you behind and make you expendable.
Excellence is a fine thing. It can even be a godlike thing. But if you have ever lived with or worked for someone whose only standard is excellence, you have encountered a merciless idol. Worship excellence, and she will have all of you, draining every single minute and breath you have. Forget being “good enough”; you have got to hit a home run every time. Yet if you are out of favor with the power brokers of excellence, even your home run may not matter.
It intrigues me that, in a culture obsessed with excellence, Christ-followers pay so little attention to Paul’s assessment of the “most excellent way” in 1 Corinthians 13.
And yet, I will show you the most excellent way. 13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
. . . Love is the most excellent way because it serves up more than excellence. Love serves and brings God’s peaceable kingdom. Love restores and heals the world. Love works. Love works on me. Love works on you.
From Adele Calhoun's book Invitations from God.
Consider:
Where am I demanding excellence from others, from myself?
What would it looks like for me to offer patient, generous love to someone today? To myself?
How does love bring the peaceable kingdom?
Are there childish ways in you that need to grow up? Talk to a friend about them today.
JUDY