Love's Awakening

For those of you that are attending Sunday Celebration Services at Unity Church of Raleigh, you know that Advent has begun and that we’ve entered a new series. Jesus’ birth heralded a new level of love in the world and an invitation to embrace even deeper levels of “Love’s Awakening” in our lives.

Won’t you commit now, to intentionally walking this journey of awakening for the next 23 days? This means consciously choosing one or more spiritual practices to bring you into the mystery and power of love – the mystery and power of God.

I’m choosing to read the “Love Chapter” in 1 Corinthians 13 every day. Won’t you join me?

The Excellence of Love (1 Cor 13) (New American Standard Version)

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 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, 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 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.