The Love chapter
Hey RIG family, we’re all familiar with “The Love Chapter” found in Ist Corinthians 13. It truly stands alone in its beauty. This shouldn’t be interpreted as an effort to compete with those words. It’s simply a little prose I wrote about Christmas that helps keep Jesus at the center of the season. I hope you find it helpful, too!
First Corinthians 13, Christmas Version
If I play Christmas music in my house all season long but the lyrics never move my heart to worship, the beautiful sounds may as well be clanging cymbals.
If I understand the significance of the Christmas story and commit the second chapter of Luke to memory, but I have not love, I am nothing.
If I drop coins in every red kettle I pass and donate toys to every drive, but have no love, it profits me nothing.
If I decorate my house with tiny white lights and dried orange garlands and buy gifts for everyone on my list, but I’m too preoccupied to love others, I’ll be just another consumer. If I bake all the traditional pies, cookies, and candies without showing love, I’ll be nothing more than a tired baker.
Love is sensitive to those whose hearts are heavy during the Christmas season.
Love doesn’t compete with their Christmas activities or compare them to others.
Love doesn’t boast of their Christmas festivities on social media.
Love doesn’t get frustrated with the cashier or break in front of others.
Love doesn’t lose its composure in holiday traffic.
Love doesn’t believe the worst of others.
Love doesn’t indulge in excess.
Love rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believers all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.
Toys will lose their appeal and gifts will be forgotten…but love that is shown will outlast it all.
When I was a child, I understood Christmas as a child. I thought only of what I could get. Now that I’ve grown up, I aim to live embracing the true meaning of Immanuel, God with us.
Now I see in a mirror, but one day I’ll see Jesus face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known. And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love
Merry Christmas,
Shellie Rushing Tomlinson
