Love Never Fails

“Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, keeps no record of wrongs. It does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.

…And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

-I Corinthians 13:4-8a, 13

This passage on love is famously quoted at weddings. It presents what we often consider our highest ideals of love, the vision of love to which we want to aspire but often fall woefully short of. Personally, I get stymied with the very first line: “love is patient.” Do you have any idea how often I am NOT patient, especially with those I love? It is… not a pretty sight. So very often I have to take a step back from my frustrations, breathe, and remind myself that literally the first descriptor of love here is “love is patient.” That’s where it begins.

There are so many passages in the Bible that teach us about the nature of love. 1 Peter 4 reminds us to “ Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.” 1 John 4 teaches us that “perfect love casts out all fear.” Song of Solomon 8 says that “love is as strong as death, its jealousy as unyielding as the grave.” But the verse that stood out to me from this passage in 1 Corinthians is verse 8, which starts off “Love never fails.”

Eventually, all other things in which we place our faith will fail: our strength, our money, our physical bodies, our jobs, our homes, the people we love, the list goes on and one. And that failure is a normal feature of this broken world that we live in. That is why it is so powerful to be reminded of the one thing that will never fail: love. God shows us a perfect love that we do not have to aspire to, because He already gives it to us freely. We can accept His unfailing love as the one facet of life that can be depended on.

I love the way the Message Bible translates Psalm 89: 2:

“Your love has always been our lives’ foundation,

your fidelity has been the roof over our world.”

God’s everlasting love is the solid foundation upon which we can rest our whole lives. Give thanks today for the love that never fails.