i sat on my porch earlier, by myself, with no noise other than the cars passing on the street in front of me and the wind whistling through the naked branches of the tree in my front yard, shelling dried beans from straw-like husks, throwing the husks away and putting the beans into bags so that they can be added to soups or what have you in the coming months. this is not a job that i particularly enjoy. tonight i feel like it had more to do with the fact that i was left alone with my thoughts, which of late, have been rather interesting and soul-revealing in nature. i wished several times for my mp3 player, but i knew that it was no use since it was in my desk drawer an hour and forty five minutes away.
i did not want to be sitting there, shelling beans. the husks are rough on my hands and make my fingers sore. i did not want to sit in silence. but the longer i sat there, even long enough that i got to see the sunset and have both legs fall asleep, making it very hard to get up afterword, the more i began to enjoy it. not only was the view perfect and the weather beautiful, i was struck by my reasons behind doing this. it was a labor of love.
my mom has not been feeling the greatest recently, and so i spent the weekend at home, helping her clean and get things ready for winter. when she asked me to shell the beans, i agreed, knowing that she doesn't have time to do this normally.
i've learned a lot about love these past few months, and even this last year in general. the passage that i mentioned earlier, that i run to every time i need a reminder of how i am loved, and how i should love others, is 1 corinthians 13. if any of you are like me at this point, you're probably groaning like i used to every time i heard this verse this past summer at countless weddings. however, i think that this chapter is more fitting to everyday life than just to weddings. the more i read it the more i find instructions to live by. it says:
" If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown language an special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown language an special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! But when full understanding comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity.All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.
Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love."
i really like the part that says love never gives up or loses faith, it is hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. hope has meant huge things for me in my life. i would not have that hope that i cling to today without the love of my Savior, Jesus. i am so thankful that He loves me, with a love that is even greater than this verse describes!
so, in essence, this is the list that came to mind as i sat shelling beans about what love is and looks like currently in my life:
1. love means being there for someone when they have possibly the most stressful day of their life
2.love means accepting imperfections
3. love means being patient, and waiting on those you love to figure things out, even if its the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life
4. love means missing people
5. love is doing random acts of kindness even though you have 50,000 other things on your plate
6. love means praying as hard as you've ever prayed in your life for God's direction in the lives of those you care for
7. love means bearing the burdens of those around you
8. love means protecting those you love if need be
9. love means forgiving
10. love means driving crazy distances simply to make someones day
and lastly, 11. love just means doing whatever you can to demonstrate to those around you, in any way possible, that they are precious to you and mean more than they could ever imagine, and that you would not be the same without them in your life.
i had a conversation with a little girl that i babysat one day this summer about love. she asked me if i loved anyone and i told her yes, lots of people. she scrunched up her nose at me and said "you kiss lots of people! that's gross!" i laughingly told her that love meant more than just kissing people. she told me "nuh uh" because bobby down the street said that love means kissing and since he's 9 he knows what he's talking about.
the more i fall in love with Jesus, the more i love others. not in a kissy way, because being honest, there's 1 person in my life i'd be okay with that kind of love, but in a way that you can demonstrate through your actions even a portion of the love that Christ has given you. Mother Teresa said it simply, but in a very profound way. she said, "spread love everywhere you go. let no one ever come to you without leaving happier."
so let us go forward, sharing the love that has been so freely given, never doubting that we are loved, remembering the wisdom of 1 corinthians 13, and continuing on in our labors of love as an outpouring of our thanks to the One who loves us more than we could ever imagine.
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