Love Is Essential

Good morning and welcome to Our Daily Walk.

Audio version at http://tinyurl.com/2he5ss

A popular song many years ago boasted, “All you need is love.” Many marriages have begun with that sentence as their motto only to find out that you still have to have a job, a place to live and food to eat. Love is an essential element to our lives and without love our lives would be vastly different.

Perhaps the most famous passage on love in the Bible is found in 1 Corinthians 13. This short chapter defines love and helps the reader to put love in proper perspective.

When my wife and I were attending a Christian university this chapter was a favorite passage to memorize for our memory work for Bible classes. It seemed especially appropriate to memorize if your girlfriend or boyfriend was also in the same class.

Here is what Paul says about love.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

I wouldn’t say that all you need in life is love, but I would say that without love in your life, you really won’t have very much. Love is essential to a good life. Love overcomes so many troubles, paves the way to so many blessings, and illuminates the good in others as well as ourselves.

Love is what we need, not all we need.

On Our Daily Walk today, may we find happiness in knowing that God loves us. May we find joy in expressing our love to others .

Our thought for the day: “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” Victor Hugo

May God bless you on your daily walk.

© Our Daily Walk, Mike Baker, 2007. Permission is granted to copy these articles provided they are not sold and the author's name and copyright are included.