1 Corinthians 13/Ep 1: Love is patient, love is kind

This is part of an extended series "1 Corinthians 13 - Discovering the Father's Love" as we journey towards Valentine's Day. Stay tuned for reflections on the beautiful verse as we meditate on the nature of love.

Many of us are familiar with 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 on the nature of love. We have seen it as divine art in the form of lockscreen wallpapers, we have likely heard it at a Catholic wedding, perhaps it’s even on our 2020 calendar! I want to challenge us to look deeper at this idea of agape, a selfless love and see how it mirrors both human relationships and our relationship with God. In this week’s episode, I look at the first verses

Love is patient, love is kind

I’ve found it hard sometimes, with various sources of stress in life, to be patient with the people around me. Imagine you have an impending deadline and you can feel the immense pressure on your shoulders. You are frantically replying work texts when a text from your friend comes in. “Can we talk?” reads the message. Soon, the phone starts ringing and reluctantly, you pick up the phone. Your friend is tearfully relaying some issues she has at work and you can feel anxiety building about your unfinished work. You feel so tempted to cut the line off……. Trust me, we have all been there. We have lost patience with the people around us and we have been quick to cut people off. Love of another is patient, not only in the sense of bearing with the difficult people in our lives but in the sense that a patient love challenges us to expand our capacity to truly embrace others with God’s help. It is not easy to model ourselves against this “perfect” love. We all seem to have a threshold of patience. Yet I marvel at the people in my life who have an inexhaustible well of patience to be a source of support for others and they have motivated me to be an emotional support to those around me as well. It reminds me of the patient love of the Father. A Father who knows our faults, our tendency to be selfish, our tendency to rely on our own human strength to overcome life’s challenges. He does not run out of patience with us, even when we have fallen many times. The idea of patience brings to mind a God that waits for us, a God who stays, much like Matthew West’s titular worship song

You're the God who stays You're the God who stays You're the one who runs in my direction When the whole world walks away You're the God who stands With wide open arms And You tell me nothing I have ever done can separate my heart From the God who stays

His love is also one that is kind, something I realise we tend to underestimate in these current times. I’ve seen a popular quote making its way across Instagram recently “Be kind to everyone you meet, you do not know what battle they are fighting”. It reminded me that we do not know the issues that the people around us face. They may be facing a lot of difficulties in different areas of life and that may manifest itself in their attitudes towards people, causing them to be easily annoyed or defensive. To love others is to extend kindness, and a sense of gentleness that I fear we may lose overtime. We have become jaded over time and may not believe in the inherent goodness of other people. Or we may have been hurt by the people we love before and we would rather hold back. We are inherently capable of a deep love, yet we are treading in the shallow waters because it is safer that way.

The idea of kindness is more than being nice to people who are nice to us. The Christian challenge is to treat those who have hurt us with kindness and a generous spirit. It requires us to look beyond the hurt that we have had to bear and to still find it within ourselves to want the best for this person. Our hearts need to be gentle and supple, as ground to sow seeds of His goodness, instead of allowing the soil to become arid. Kindness is like a delicate fall of rain that softens even the most hardened of hearts. This reminded me of the imagery I received in a prayer session, of a delicate fall of rain on parched soil, a gradual remoulding of the heart. Kindness may not be our first instinct, as there is always the temptation to say something unkind as a defense mechanism. Yet, let us challenge ourselves to look at others with the eyes of kindness and to guard our hearts against resentment. We truly know that we love someone when we can feel the confines of our heart expanding outwards, we can feel our inner capacities for care and concern increasing and we surprise ourselves with the lengths we will go to make the people we love happy.

The love the Father has for us is patient and kind. He is waiting for us to return to Him when we stumble, like the good Father He is. He loves us with a kindness and tenderness, like a Father holding a child in His arms. Let us also love the people around us with a love like His.