Love conquerors all?

Dear Diary


What happens when you get tired of the chase? You are left disappointed that the prize was so close and yet not found. When you have spent your ... time, money, love and have nothing left to go on. What is left?

Does love endure? I believe that yes it must, romantic fool that I am I believe love endures, conquerors, prevails.

So believing in love, but exhausted of heart what does one do? Simply let go? Or hold on in faith? Does one resign oneself to keep on loving, knowing that one may never receive that love in return? Is this asking the impossible?

I am human. What I want to do is withdraw my love, shut it away, keep it hidden, to withhold and punish ... and to express how much that love, though freely given has cost. But I am confronted by the thought that to act as such is not to act in love. And haven’t I just professed my belief in love?

Can I not just tell you that I have run out of love? That I have shut up shop - and that all that is left in the cupboard is ugly disappointment and frustration? Those I have in abundance! How I would say “dear friend I love you but...” and then by my very confession, love becomes something that is not love at all.

A little voice inside pipes up: “what about me?” Am I not good enough? What have I done that you would withhold your love from me? Was I not a good enough friend? I loved with all I had, but why was this not enough?

So in my exhaustion, rejection, hurt, frustration and disappointment, I pray to the One and ask for grace. I am struck that He must feel the same towards me! That He is forever extending to me his love, and I am consistent in my ignorance of it.

Who am I then to moan? I am human, but he is, God. He wrote the book on this one, and so even though I may struggle ... I will act in love. He first loved me.

1 Corinthians 13 (The Message Bible)
The Way of Love

1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2 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. 3-7 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.

Love 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 God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

8-10 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.