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Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.1
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Love is a consistent passion to give, not a meek persistent hope to receive.2
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To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.3
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Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.4
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A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.5
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Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”6
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The art of love ... is largely the art of persistence.7
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Love means to love that which is unlovable; or it is no virtue at all.8
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Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more, and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.9
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True love ennobles and dignifies the material labors of life; and homely services rendered for love’s sake have in them a poetry that is immortal.10
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We say that grace is “unmerited favor.” And we are instructed to love as Christ loves us. He shows us grace; we are to show each other grace. What does that mean? That means we are to be kinder to people than what we think they deserve.11
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Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.12
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This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.13
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Impart unto me, O God, I pray Thee, the spirit of Thy love, that I may be more anxious to give than to receive, more eager to understand than to be understood, more thoughtful for others, more forgetful of myself.14
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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.15
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Love has no uttermost, as the stars have no number and the sea no rest.16
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The angel is the benevolent stranger who shows some ordinary kindness to miraculous effect. It is the woman who is friendly to the grungy kid on the bridge, not knowing he had been planning to jump off, but whose chitchat breaks the spell of despair so that, instead of plummeting to his death, he goes home and makes an omelet. The woman would continue on her way, unaware, but for that moment, in that tableau, she was an angel. In a painting of the moment, the light would fall on her.17
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Who has not found the heaven below
Will fail of it above.
God’s residence is next to mine,
His furniture is love.18
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There is no surprise more magical than the surprise of being loved: It is God’s finger on man’s shoulder.19
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To love for the sake of being loved is human, but to love for the sake of loving is angelic.20
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You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love.21
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Love only gives one answer, and it is YES.
To every fear that begs to be faced.
To every longing for approval, to the need to be valued.
To the heart’s wish to be treasured, even with its cuts and scars showing.
Love says yes.22
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Jesus calls us to show this truth forth, live this truth forth. Be the light of the world, he says. Where there are dark places, be the light especially there. Be the salt of the earth. Bring out the true flavor of what it is to be alive truly. Be truly alive. Be life-givers to others. That is what Jesus tells the disciples to be. That is what Jesus tells his Church, tells us, to be and do. Love each other. Heal the sick, he says. Raise the dead. Cleanse lepers. Cast out demons. That is what loving each other means. If the Church is doing things like that, then it is being what Jesus told it to be. If it is not doing things like that—no matter how many other good and useful things it may be doing instead—then it is not being what Jesus told it to be. It is as simple as that.23
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Smile at each other, smile at your wife, smile at your husband, smile at your children, smile at each other—it doesn’t matter who it is—and that will help you to grow up in greater love for each other.24
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Let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.25
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Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.26
Published June 2012. Read by Bethany Kelly. Music by Michael Dooley.
1 Song of Solomon 8:7 NIV.
2 Swami Chinmayananda.
3 Karen Sunde.
4 Author unknown.
5 Proverbs 17:17 NIV.
6 Matthew 22:37–39 NKJV.
7 Albert Ellis.
8 G. K. Chesterton.
9 Merle Shain.
10 Harriet Beecher Stowe.
11 Author unknown.
12 1 Peter 4:8 NIV.
13 1 John 3:16 NIV.
14 F. B. Meyer.
15 1 Corinthians 13:1–3 NLT.
16 Eleanor Farjeon.
17 Melanie Thernstrom.
18 Emily Dickinson.
19 Charles Morgan.
20 Alphonse de Lamartine.
21 Henry Drummond.
22 Author unknown.
23 Frederick Buechner.
24 Mother Teresa.
25 1 John 3:18 NIV.
26 1 Corinthians 13:4–8a NIV.copyright@thefamilyinternational
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