The Face in the Mirror

Psalm 32:7 (New International Version)
7 You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance. Selah

Love prodded. I resist the pull to old ways, I wrestle.

But Jesus is defined by love. It is his very essence.

And so I open my Bible to a passage I have lived in of late: 1 Corinthians 13. Today I read it wanting so much to be the love that I read of. After all, love that cannot be tested, is no love at all.

Love...
Is patient, where I can be so impatient.

Is kind, and cares for the other person more than for self--another area in which I need to grow.

Keeps no record of wrongs. When I feel accused I am tempted to rehearse past hurts.

Always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

I fight the urge to hide, but he is my hiding place (Psalm 32:7).

How appropriate are the words at the end of 1 Corinthians 13 in verses 11-12:

11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. 12Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

A child's thoughts are naturally self referential and only gradually shift to greater selflessness. There is a connection with agape love here. How "childish" I still am!

God challenges me to put away childish ways so that the face in the mirror looks more like Jesus. I want that more than anything.

As a garment takes the shape of the body it clothes, be in me and shape me, Lord. Conform me to the image of Jesus.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Belinda,
Can you explain this line: "Always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." Is that something love does? Or is it something that if I am to properly love, I should be doing?
The other points seem to be more things we can actually do in love, but this one is different...
I'm completely in love with this - it's St. Paul's writing, right?
I think children are much better at loving, even if the world does seem to revolve around them. :) Can we still have the FFC though, even if we try to be more selfless?
Love, night owl
10:51 AM
Belinda said…
Dear Night Owl,
Yes, the writing is St.Paul's but inspired by God.

The verses on protection and trust are about love in action. They are what we will demonstrate in attitude and action when Christ inhabits us. Today as I wrote them I was thinking of relationships and how love never gives up.

The passage is known as the "Love Chapter," 1 Corinthians 13. At Lead Like Jesus conference I recently attended, we read the chapter and put our names in where Love is mentioned--eg. Belinda is patient etc. and were encouraged to read it that way periodically as a springboard to their becoming real in our lives.
Love today to you and Melanie and all readers!
11:49 AM
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