Light at the End of the Tunnel by Ericka Clay - HTML preview
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Goodbye, New York
I've always been a prideful person.
I've struggled with this sin, but God, in His goodness, is working it out of me through circumstances beyond my control.
And thank you, God, for that.
When I was younger, I had this self-deceptive thought that I could easily cut the people who were grieving me one way or another from my life and run off to New York where I'd become a rich and well-known author.
Yeah, because that's a thing.
Later in my life, I started to realize there was something wrong with that kind of thinking. And I realized it was because that mindset lacked something that the very being of God is.
Love.
“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.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. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Even if you're not a believer, you've most likely heard the bolded part at weddings. But it's kind of a travesty that the entire chapter isn't read.
Because Paul isn't talking about a romantic love but a sacrificial love embodied by Christ on the cross.
It is a love that is beyond our ability to purely radiate, and we can only do so with the help of the Holy Spirit.
As someone who lingered a bit too long in the academic world, I often think I have things all figured out. I have a knowledge I could easily boast about, but according to God's Word, that boasting and high-brow knowledge, left alone to fester and boost my pride, will only lead straight to hell.
It’s of absolutely no worth if I can't even love my brothers and sisters.
God has forgiven me much, and I'm on a journey of forgiving those who have wronged me, angered me, annoyed me...you get the picture.
Because I'm no perfect person either. And I think maybe that's the ultimate point.
I don't deserve God's love, but He gives it to me anyway.
So, who am I to not offer the same?