Love never ends!

26Nov
Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. 

For it is written,
‘He catches the wise in their craftiness’, and again,
‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’

So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God. 

-I Corinthians 4:16-22


God is love. This is one of the first things I learned in Sunday school. So when I read the first two lines of this passage written by Paul to the fractured and fragmented Corinthian community, I think about it like this: 


Do you not know that you are made of Love and that Love dwells in you? If anyone destroys Love, Love will destroy that person. For Love’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.


Part of our work as Christians is to counter the attacks on living in love. This is an inside job - work that occurs within our own hearts - and requires constant attention. If we project our own fear and uncertainty onto others - maybe especially those we love the most - it is not coming from a place of love. What would happen to you and me if we woke up every morning and said to ourselves, “I am made of Love and Love dwells in me!”? I suspect that love would be bursting out to be shared. It isn’t an emotion as much as an insistent yearning for action!


If you listen to the news, we live in a dark time of division, misunderstanding, misinformation, violence, and war. As we are in the last week of this Church year, and approaching the advent of a new one, we have the opportunity to begin again. What this passage suggests to me is that I must continue to search out Truth both with humility, and from the assurance that we frail humans are created by Love and made of Love, in order to share Love. This is an act of resistance! Love is suffering. Practicing the Christian faith teaches us that every moment, somewhere in this world - whether by war, violence, neglect or exclusion, we have the opportunity to bring the salve of Christ’s Love to heal the wounds with something creative and generative.


What does Jesus teach us? That over and over in history, principalities and powers try to attack and kill Love. But! Love never ends. (I Corinthians 8a)


Musical Reflection - Let My Love Be Heard - Stellenbosch Choir


The world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God (Love). Amen

Love

Posted by Maria Elliott

Maria Elliott has been Trinity since 1994, first as a parishioner and then for sixteen years establishing the office of stewardship and development, and currently as the Director of Pastoral Care and Spiritual Life. 

WIth a degree in Music and Business from Drake University in her native state of Iowa, Maria went first to New York to work for a concert artist management and then for the Arts department at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.  At the Cathedral, Maria was confirmed, met and married her husband, The Reverend Michael Kuhn, and began an accidental career in the Episcopal Church. She has served on the Diocesan Stewardship Committee, the boards of The Episcopal Network for Stewardship and the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes, as a Stephen Minister, and currently Education for Ministry Mentor.

Maria’s interests include playing the oboe in the New Orleans Civic Symphony and she is currently training to be a Narrative Enneagram mentor. Her daughters, Hallie Wilkins and Sophie Bedaña are Trinity School alumni. Maria has two grandchildren, Celeste and Alden Wilkins.

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