From now through Valentine’s Day, I’m posting some meditation thoughts on progressive bits and pieces from what is called the Love Chapter, 1 Corinthians 13. The approach I’m taking is to use a creative license to paraphrase and expand the presentation of the Apostle Paul, imagining what he would have done if he had taken more writing space and time and artistic freedom to flesh out his thoughts. I welcome your comments and your own creative angles.
“I want to tell you about God’s marvelous kind of love, which is called agape (ah-ga-pay) love. Let me set the background for that by talking first about gifting:
Let’s say I’m extremely gifted! I mean gifted with the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to people, so I’m charismatically-gifted [like I’ve just been talking about in the previous chapter]! Such as:
I can speak the/many/doesn’t matter how many, but lots! of human languages;
and I’ll go one up on that,
I can speak the languages of angels! I’m talking heavenly languages that can’t really be taught;
–you gotta admit, this would be an extraordinary gifting!—
but if I don’t demonstrate God’s love in my interactions with others,
then my extraordinary gifting of language would be about as useful, helpful, and pleasant to others as the noise coming from the random and haphazard banging and crashing of cymbals (pots and pans also come to mind) that sort of don’t contribute to anything musically! (Ear plugs anyone??)
In other words, my gifting would not be in harmony with my love, and therefore it wouldn’t make good music.”
Freddy Boswell 