I created a Christian mix tape this past summer and my mom, sister and her best friend and I were driving to an amusement park listening to the CD. On the mix was Proof of Your Love by for King and Country (which has the best music video I have ever seen in a Christian song). In the middle of the song are these beautiful words about love. We all stopped and just listened. Not until months later did I find where the words came from. I get a Bible verse on my phone everyday and I like the Message translation better than NIV in most cases. When I first read these words, I was dumbstruck. I could easily recite 1 Corinthians 13 – which is known as the love chapter – in the New International Version, but when I read it in the Message it felt so new and alive. So below I am sharing with you the Message version of 1 Corinthians 13.
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
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.
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.
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 canceled.
When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.
We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.
When I was younger, my sister and I would pick dandelion bouquets for our mother. Even though it wasn’t a dozen roses, it was just a handful of weeds, my mother still loved it. The dandelion bouquet was a double bonus: a sign of our love for her and she got her garden weeded. The same way it is for God, we do good works because we love Him and want to please Him. It is also a double bonus: a sign of our love for God and we help His other children.
No matter how big our dandelion-picking-love is for God, His will always be bigger, deeper, fuller, all consuming love. His grace in saving us wasn’t just what we did not deserve but He also chases after us. He pursues us with His love and His grace. He sacrificed His son and He won’t let that go to waste.
God didn’t just save us willy-nilly, He didn’t just say, “Sure, I’ll take that one”; He didn’t choose you by accident. God didn’t create you by mistake and He sure didn’t save you by mistake. God created you and loved you for a divine reason. God gave you a second chance and a third chance and a twentieth chance and fifty-seventh chance for a reason! He did it more than just because He loves you, more than because He wants you to be happy, He did it because He has a divine purpose for you. God sent His son to die a horrific death on the cross to save you so that you could do something amazing. Something amazing like sitting and listening to a coworker after a hard day. Something amazing like baby-sitting for a single mom. Something amazing like visiting someone in a nursing home. Something amazing like building a house. Something amazing like being known as the Christian in the family. Something amazing like fixing cars. You have been saved for a purpose and that is to do good works, to help others. When we love others, we are loving our Lord and we are fulfilling the first and the second greatest commandments.
We are to live saved every day, we are to live knowing that there is a God up there and that He is large and in charge. We are to use our talents to fulfill our God-given, divine purpose every day. If you think your background, age, or education are reasons why God can’t use you, think again. Look at who the Lord Almighty, Creator of the heavens and the Earth, chose to be His son’s earthly foster parents: an unwed teenage peasant girl and a carpenter from a town in the middle of nowhere. Look at who Jesus, our Savior and Redeemer, spent His time with: under-educated fishermen, crooked tax collectors, reformed prostitutes. If you believe that God created the universe, then God using you to fulfill a divine purpose is like a cakewalk to Him.
Now go out and do something amazing, go out and fulfill your purpose knowing that God has your back and your future.
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Every day he would bring her roses. He would set his alarm for 3:30 AM to get to her cello practice room before she did. She was dedicated, two and a half hour practices before school. Those hours of practice were what life should be all about. Life should be struggles to hit the right cord, but the happiness that follows when your part of the symphony is perfect. She was what life should be.
He would slip into her soundproof room and carefully place a single rose on her sheet music. The roses would differ every time, but without fail there would always be a fragile flower waiting when the elegant cellist would come to make the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter. The roses would be passionate dark red like the dress she wore when he first saw her at her symphony. Or the rose would be white as the snow on her birthday in January. He would always feel elated when he dropped the pink rose on her stand because it was soft and sweet like he imagined her lips to be. The yellow rose would remind him of couples walking in the summer time and the girls wearing their sundresses and how he wanted that to be him and the cellist. The peachy-orange was like the sunrise he watched as she played.
He must have spent thousands on roses for a girl he never dared talk to. He must have lost countless hours of sleep thinking about the one smile she had ever cast on him. He must have gone crazy for the girl to stop his college education so he could watch her every move. He must have.
She would laugh when ice cream dribbled down her chin in the hot hot summer time. He wanted to be the one to make her laugh like that. She would dance like no one was watching at the clubs. He wanted to dance with her like that. She would care enough to help the homeless person outside her daily coffee shop to buy them a warm drink. He wanted that caring towards him.
He fell in love with the girl who never knew his name.
One day she never came to practice. He still dropped off her rose like he always did and waited. The rose was still there when he came to give the rose of next day. She had never missed two days of practice in a row. Music was her life; her music was his life. He continued with his normal routine and went to her apartment. She was not home, but her car was still in the parking lot.
He had never gone into her apartment before, but he had to find out what was wrong. He had to find out what had made life wrong. He slowly turned her doorknob like so many times he wanted to, but could not put his courage where his heart was. Unlocked. She should not leave her door unlocked in a city like this, who knows what kind of creepers could break in. The door swung open and her apartment was just like he imagined. Nothing out of place. Bright colors. Modern furniture. Photos of friends on the fridge. A worn looking copy of The Great Gatsby opened to page 95 was in her chair.
“There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams – not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.”
Her bed looked just like her personality with a yellow sunflower comforter. So welcoming. Except for what lay on it. Towards the upper-middle was a rather large crimson stain. A fresh crimson stain. With eyes open to see the stars twinkle happily at her music laid the cellist with a bullet to her brunette head. Gun in her right hand and her left pointing to a note. Of course. Always leave a note.
They said I was not talented enough. They said I was not good enough. They said to move on and live a real life. If someone is reading this, then that means I chose a real death. I was actually cut from the program months ago, but they let me still use their practice rooms until I moved. Music was my life, my whole life and I do not know what that means without Juilliard giving me a chance. I think I would have ended it right there if not for the roses. Ever since I came to the school there has been roses on my stand each morning, but I came to value them more and more when no one seemed to value me. They would remind me of better times, brighter times. These past few months, I saved each and every one. But roses are not enough. Life got too disappointing and roses could not fill that void.
He walked out. He left everything the way it was for the police and her family. Except for the note. The note was for him. The note was because of him.
He continued to bring roses. He brought roses for months afterwards. A new rose was placed at her forgotten stand even when her apartment was cleaned out. Even though years went by as did the people who used that room, no one disturbed the stand with thousands of roses left in the corner. On the day of his retirement party for working at the school as a janitor for forty years, he placed her last rose.
The cellist had stolen his heart as she had stolen her life.
This one only took me two hours and two magazines! I started cutting and the words seemed to choose themselves. This poem is about the relationships that I see in high schoolers or any relationship were one person conforms to what the other expects. Expectations, you can either set the bar low or high and they will met it if you expect them to. Why do people feel like they need to conform to society, to their peers, to their significant other?
People like to feel accepted. That they are one of the group, but are the best part of the group of course! People want to fit in, but stand out just enough to feel important. I get that. I’ve done that. And I am trying to discern when to or not to.
Our society and culture is all about the individual and how they are important. Yes, great! But that individual has to fit into the group of individuals. A group solely made for being singular. All about me in the this great big world of other amazing individuals and their Instagram posts.
But don’t get me wrong social media can be wonderful to spread worthy causes. But a while back remember the water dunking ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, everyone started doing it because celebrities were doing it. It became more about ‘Hey I did that!’ than the cause.
So what I am saying is that, you don’t need to conform to a group or idea or expectation because you think you need to or someone wants you to. Finding who you are and who you are meant to be is one of the hardest things, and you need don’t need a fad to stray you in the wrong direction.
But here is another thought, sometimes you don’t need to find who you are, but create it. You may look around and see everyone else has their niche. Their home, their friends, the echos of laughs at the lunch table. But you don’t. You begin to think, maybe this person that I am creating myself to be is wrong. Maybe I am wrong and they are right. Maybe I am the problem.
No! Sometimes before creating who you are, you need to create what you are. By creating what you are, determines who you are and who you will become.
Did you ever think about who started the groups that everyone always flocks to? Maybe they were the outcast and decided to do something about it and created what they are. The clique had to start somewhere.
Final big thoughts: Be you. Find or create you. Create what you are. Once you find or create that, live that. If people don’t like it, honor their choice. They choose who they are and maybe you don’t fit into that. People make choices that are right for them, not you and how it will make you feel. We don’t ever really think about that. That there is more lives and life choices than ‘me’.
General when we make choices, who do we make them for?
Us. Me. You. Because that is the first person that it will impact. Every time I pray, I pray that I will not only show and be a good witness to Christ, but I hope that my actions will have an impact. A good one I hope. I pray that I will not be self-centered that I miss how I affected someone. I pray that I will see their pain and be able to do something. And if I can’t at least I can show that I acknowledge that I see their pain and they feel noticed.
So to the people who ask other’s to change for them or because they think they have to. Your path, your choice, your life of who you are creating yourself to be, doesn’t fit everyone. People are different. Not everyone likes pineapple on their pizza! (I do).
Okay, I promise last time of me trying to wrap up. People make choices. People make choices for themselves, not you. Honestly, people normally don’t care how their actions affect you. Or they just don’t think about it. So give some people some slack, or more in Bible terms, show mercy, do not give judgement, but discern. You matter, but you don’t matter when people make their life choices for themselves. You matter when you make your life choices. You make you of who you want to be.
God created you to be you. Nothing more or less. God created you to be you and not what society wants you to be. Everything about you is perfect in your perfectly crazy life.
I’ll leave you with some lyrics from my favorite artist Jamie Grace’s Every Bit of Lovely:
Don’t you know that you’re God’s original work of art, yes you are
So don’t ever let them tell you that you’re less than wonderful
Cause you’re a one and only
You’re every little bit, every little bit of lovely
Have you seen a lightning storm?
And have you heard the oceans roar?
Have you seen a newborn baby smile?
Well, the same God who made all that, made you
Receive Grace 2 Show Grace 