Scripture
1 Corinthians 13:1-8a, 13
The first lesson comes from 1 Corinthians 13 as paraphrased by J.B. Phillips.
Listen for the Word of God to you.
If I were to speak with the combined eloquence of [mortals] and angels I should stir [people] like a fanfare of trumpets or the crashing of cymbals, but unless I had love, I should do nothing more. If I had the gift of foretelling the future and had in my mind not only all human knowledge but the secrets of God, and if, in addition I had that absolute faith which can move mountains, but had no love, I tell you I should amount to nothing at all. If I were to sell all my possessions to feed the hungry and, for my convictions allowed my body to be burned, and yet had no love, I should achieve precisely nothing.
This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of
being constructive. It is not possessive; it is neither anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own importance.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage. It is not
touchy. It does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other
people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good [folk] when truth prevails.
Love knows no limit to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its
hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that still stands when all else has fallen.
John 15:12-17
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.
