Week 7
Day 1
Love: Be Constructive
Buffets can be
great places! We can eat a lot or a
little (I’ve never done the latter, but I hear it can happen). We can eat what’s good for us…or…not so much. We can eat fast or slow. Kids can eat frozen pizza and chicken nuggets
while mom and dad eat crab legs. The point is, we can pick what we want. Assuming that the buffet has good food
(that’s the rub, buffets tend to be lesser quality), it can be a happy dining
experience, a win-win for each person, a triumph of individual tastes and free
choice.
Unfortunately we
have a cultural view of love which likes to treat love as a buffet. We like to pick and choose what we think
tastes good to us…and leave behind what doesn’t. That, according to our Higher Love song, 1
Corinthians 13, is not love at all. Look
at verses 6 and 7.
6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
One way to summarize this powerful passage is
“love does not approach life like a buffet, choosing the parts of “love” which
please ourselves (verse 5 love is not self-seeking), and abandoning the course
when it ceases to taste good.”
Max Lucado writes,
What if
parents could do this with kids? “I’ll
take a plate of good grades and cute smiles, and I’m passing on the teenage
identity crisis and tuition bills.”…and spouse with spouse, “H’m, how about a bowl of good health and
good moods. But job transfers, in-laws,
and laundry are not on my diet.” It
wouldn’t be love…Love is willing to accept all things.[1]
Verse 6-7 provide the answer to “buffet love” – Verse
6 emphasizes that love is not a feeling (what pleases me) but a guide to
rejoice in the truth, what pleases God rather than what pleases me. And note the prominence of the word always in verse 7. It literally reads (in original language) bears all things, believes all things, etc. The idea is that love is not buffet
style. It is more like mom’s
kitchen. You know, “I am not running a
restaurant here, you eat what you’re given you clean your plate.” This “mom’s kitchen” kind of higher love is
the love The Father shows us in His Son Jesus, it is the love that is poured
into us by the Holy Spirit, and is the love described in this greatest of all
love songs, 1 Corinthians 13.
Questions for Reflection
Reflect on the
aspects of higher love from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7:
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not
boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes,
always perseveres.
Which of these
do you find appealing to your taste, like the items you choose in a
buffet?
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Which of these
do you find yourself passing over like the things you don’t like in a
buffet?
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Search your
heart: why do you make the above choices?
Usually it has to do with past or current circumstances where love is
tough.
Based on this
devotional, write out a prayer expressing your heart to the Lord.
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