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21 April 2008
Word on the Web
Meditations for Life's Journey - Relationships
From the Wise Traveller Series
Today's Word on the Web follows a different format to our normal pattern and uses material from the "Wise Traveller" series of meditations for life's journey on relationships. The material is copyright Scripture Union and used by permission.
Wise Traveller
Lover
Love is patient... She sips her coffee and tries to focus on the pages of her novel, wondering when the phone will ring. She had promised to give him time to forgive her, so after a moment of staring intently at the receiver she returns to her book...
Love is patient... For the second time that week, they sit slumped together on the sofa, listening to late-night radio and watching the clock. As the minutes turn into hours, they try to breathe calmly and wonder what time their son will finally return home...
Love is patient... Addressing the envelope, she pauses fondly to remember the lifelong friend now many miles away. With her heart full of all the years they have shared, she picks up her pen and begins another letters...
Love is patient... As his wife slowly begins to lift her aching body from the chair, he pretends to look out of the window at the daffodils. Then, with perfect timing, he silently leans forward and with a familiar and practised gesture, he offers her his arm and smiles...
Love is patient...
Emma Sergeant
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, 'Jump' and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere, so, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Lover never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always 'me first',
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts in God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be cancelled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1 - 13 (The Bible, The Message version)
For more information on Wise Traveller see Wise Traveller - Meditations for Life's Journey
This material is copyright Scripture Union 2007
Word on the Web
Meditations for Life's Journey - Relationships
From the Wise Traveller Series
Today's Word on the Web follows a different format to our normal pattern and uses material from the "Wise Traveller" series of meditations for life's journey on relationships. The material is copyright Scripture Union and used by permission.
Wise Traveller
Lover
Love is patient... She sips her coffee and tries to focus on the pages of her novel, wondering when the phone will ring. She had promised to give him time to forgive her, so after a moment of staring intently at the receiver she returns to her book...
Love is patient... For the second time that week, they sit slumped together on the sofa, listening to late-night radio and watching the clock. As the minutes turn into hours, they try to breathe calmly and wonder what time their son will finally return home...
Love is patient... Addressing the envelope, she pauses fondly to remember the lifelong friend now many miles away. With her heart full of all the years they have shared, she picks up her pen and begins another letters...
Love is patient... As his wife slowly begins to lift her aching body from the chair, he pretends to look out of the window at the daffodils. Then, with perfect timing, he silently leans forward and with a familiar and practised gesture, he offers her his arm and smiles...
Love is patient...
Emma Sergeant
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, 'Jump' and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere, so, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
Lover never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always 'me first',
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts in God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be cancelled.
When I was an infant at my mother's breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
1 Corinthians 13:1 - 13 (The Bible, The Message version)
For more information on Wise Traveller see Wise Traveller - Meditations for Life's Journey
This material is copyright Scripture Union 2007
