How can we remain bitter and critical
and lose confidence in people
when we read 1 Corinthians 13?
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angles,
but do not have love,
I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
If I have the gift of prophecy,
and know all mysteries and all knowledge:
and if I have all faith,
so as to remove mountains,
but do not have love, I am nothing.
And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor,
and if I surrender my body to be burned,
but do not have love,
it profits me nothing.
Love is patient,
love is kind,
and is not jealous;
love does not brag and is not arrogant,
does not act unbecomingly;
it does not seek its own,
is not provoked,
does not take into account a wrong suffered,
does not rejoice in unrighteousness,
but rejoices with the truth;
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.
Love never fails;
but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away;
if there are tongues,
they will cease;
if there is knowledge,
it will be done away.
For if we know in part and we prophesy in part
but when the perfect comes,
the partial will be done away.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child,
think like a child,
reason like a child;
when I became a man,
I did away with childish things.
For now we see in a mirror dimly,
but then face to face;
now I know in part,
but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known.
But now faith, hope, love abide these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Shelia's Notes 