For whatever reasons, love, or the meaning of love, has ever been an enigma to me. A beloved friend and I did a study of love for our own education nearly fifty years ago. I doubt we came out any smarter, but we bragged as if we had, I laugh to admit.
This morning, I'm wrestling with love as compared to charity...the act of love v. the act of charity. I use 1 Corinthians 13:13 for comparison purposes.
As it is written today, And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love, vs. the King James Version, And now faith, hope, and charity abide, these three; and the greatest of these is charity.
I have always preferred the charity version, because the word love has become all but meaningless...from overuse probably. Charity gives without expectations of a return, love wants...expects...a return.
I do charitably give. I do not recall ever, with an expectation of getting back, charitably giving anything to anybody. Love, now...a warm and wonderful feeling that flows from within, is not charity.
If met with nada, with simple indifference or no interest, love's warm and wonderful is stopped in a heartbeat. Depending on the intensity, our warm feeling can turn judgmental faster than a heartbeat.
Testing that, or my interpretation of it, I have had the devil's own time, so to speak, in getting a feeling of love for God. Or of God's love for me. Likely because I don't know what that is supposed to feel like.
I know this, every time I come here, I wind up taking myself too seriously. I'm just going to think of God and I as being in charity with each other...that fits.
Charity and laugh. Uh-oh.
Thank you.
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