These words keep running through my mind....

These words keep running through my head ever since I posted a pictorial list of them a while back. It's like a constant litany of conviction over and over and over in my head.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

These verses are part of the larger Chapter of 1 Corinthians 13.

1 Corinthians 13 English Standard Version

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. ²And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³ If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant ⁵or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;⁶it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

⁸Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. ¹¹When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. ¹²For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

¹³So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

And love:

• is patient and kind
• does not envy or boast
• is not arrogant or rude.
• does not insist on its own way
• is not irritable or resentful
• does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth
• bears all things
• believes all things
• hopes all things
• endures all things
• never ends

I'm reading a book lately about a fellow who struggles with porn, and how he and his wife deal with that, and how remembering what love is helps them. It's a fiction book...sometimes rather preachy which is why I often don't like Christian fiction, but I'm finding this particular book at this particular time in my life is forcing me to think. How do I show my love for my family, for my Lord and Saviour, and for the world around me? How DO I honestly do that?

And I find, if I really look at myself, that I am so very often a failure at doing so. Can't say I much care for that but if I'm honest I can't really say that I can change myself or make myself different. I HAVE to pray more and ask God to help me and I'm not so sure that will be an easy road.

I do know that it means some changes in my life.
Going to bed on time.
Getting up a bit earlier.
Changing some of what I do during the day.
It means choosing to make deliberate time.

But I need to do something..having a litany of words running through my head doesn't help one maintain a focus on just about anything. :) So let's see what God has in store for me, for my family and the community in which I am part of shall we?