Love is...

Two Sundays ago we began our Spring series on 1 Corinthians 13. After two weeks I hope it's going well, but it's always hard to tell. Yesterday we took "Love is crucial" as our theme and I found myself deeply moved as I talked about the way of love in the light of grace. I read an account of Tony Campolo's birthday party for a prostitute in Honolulu. Church as it should be.

Perhaps the Beatles were right after all, love is all you need.

I decided that we would spend the time between the New Year and Easter looking at love. We could have done just 4 or 6 sermons, but something drew me to taking an extended stay in Paul's wonderful declaration about love. We're also doing something unusual in that we're reading the passage every week. That's right, 13 weeks of hearing Paul on love. I know there are plenty of other passages we could have read, but I so wanted to soak myself, let alone the congregation, in this passage. It will be different voices and different versions, but the same message. Over and over again we'll hear "Love is..." 

The question is: Can we remain unchanged? If we believe that the word of God is alive and powerful, that it cuts between soul and spirit, joint and marrow, exposing our innermost thoughts (Heb. 4:12), how can we not be changed by exposure to it?

RT Kendall speaks about a man who read this chapter every day for a whole year, once a week for a quarter should be possible for us!

And my goal? Well apart from soaking in the description of love, being changed by, being motivated to live it out and understanding how important it is for us to be people of love and grace above everything else, I guess I hope that by the time we get to Easter we'll be so much more aware of how much we are loved. More than we've ever realised before, more than we can hold in by an act of our will. 

Let grace abound. Let love be lived. Let God be honoured.