Love Divine: Meditations for the Advent, Christmas, and New Year SeasonSample

"First Sunday After Epiphany: Love Never Fails" 

If I Corinthians 13 is a portrait of love, then it must be a portrait of Jesus Christ, who is love incarnate. Every aspect of love finds its perfection in his affection. Thus, to live out the Love Chapter is to learn how to love the way Jesus loves. 

Only the love of Jesus is constantly patient and perfectly kind. Only his love never envies or boasts, but always puts other people first. Only his love never gets sinfully irritated or unrighteously angry, but always serves and always forgives. Only his love has the strength to bear all things, the faith to believe all things, and the perseverance to endure all things. 

Since we are loved this way, we are also called to live this way—loving the way Jesus loves. God has not given us his love so that we can keep it to ourselves but rather so that we might share it with others. The Love Chapter closes with a simple command that should motivate and animate everything we have been learning about the love of Jesus. The command comes at the beginning of chapter 14, but really it serves as the practical conclusion to the Love Chapter: “Pursue love” (v. 1).  

This lifelong calling is one in which we all fail miserably, of course. Indeed, we fail to love as much as we fail at anything else in life. Yet it is when we run out of love, especially, that we need to remember the never-failing love of Jesus. As we try and often fail to love, we are at the very same time being loved by God, because we can never be separated from the true Love Divine! 

And so, as you face a fresh New Year, pursue love! Keep learning to love the way Jesus loves, recognizing this as a process that will take a lifetime. We are enabled and empowered to love because we ourselves are loved with an everlasting love. We will find, again and again, that we cannot love without the love of Jesus to carry us along. But we will also find, again and again, that his love is right there with us. 

As we embark upon the New Year, how can we more intentionally pursue love?