PrayerBits for Saturday

PrayerBits

A bite sized devotional program
produced by the West Side Presbyterian Church

Saturday

Scripture lesson: 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 Love is...

Time to reflect: Portions of this are used in most weddings. However, this is not really the form of love being spoken of here. Again, this is part of a letter of instructions to a church. It is not written to individuals, or society at large. It is telling a church how to live together as a Christian community. The word translated into English “love” is an especially strong word meaning more like “sacrificial caring.” It is not a romantic concept at all.

Moving through the day: Say verses 4-8a slowly thinking about each quality in terms of your church community.

The Gift of Love

13If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast,* but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly,* but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.