The way of love

As I grow older I'm starting to realize it's not about how much love I can get, but how much I can love.

I'd rather have a heart of flesh, that has been worn, broken and restored than a heart of stone, unimaginably cold and detached from its true purpose - for love.

And if that sometimes means silence even when I am burning in anger and eager to argue, so be it. If it means waiting patiently when the world tells me things are impossible and I should just to give up, so be it. If it means saying sorry even when I'm not explicitly at fault, so be it.

Because the truth is, everything boils down to love. Love is why we were created, are redeemed and have a hope and a future.

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge it will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. 

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." 

- 1 Corinthians 13:4-13

When I said I would take up my cross and follow Him four years ago, I might not have known the full extent of what this journey of faith entailed. But I made that commitment anyway, a promise to follow Him regardless of anything that would stand in my way.

Today I renew my vows from all those years ago. I made a choice to follow Jesus, and I will stick to it. I have bound myself to Christ, and have denounced my freedom to give up my faith when the going gets tough. I have surrendered every tendency to do things with my own strength, and vow to commit everything unto Him, and only Him. Whenever I stumble, I choose not to let myself fall, but to cling unto the Lord, even in the strongest of my weaknesses.

I love, because He first loved me.