When I read the love chapter in the bible, I remember how deficient I am in love language. My husband was gifted with human eloquence when it came to love talk. He would proclaim his love for me with beautiful proclamations; I would stand there like a bump on a pickle and could only stammer, “Me, too.” To be fair to myself, I was better at verses 4 – 7 than I was with the spoken language of love.

But I wasn’t by any means perfect at loves’ descriptions.  I was longsuffering, but I did keep score in our marriage: I let things build up.  I laugh when I look back at my idealistic goals. We married when I was only fifteen.  I aimed to be the perfect wife – one who did everything right. On the other hand, Steve would quickly state his displeasures, and to him, it was then over. When I read, “Love doesn’t fly off the handle,” it reminded me of a scene (now, one I can laugh about) during our first year of marriage. Steve was working on some radiator problem on the car.  I sat on the back steps watching. He asked me to get the garden hose and fill the radiator.  I did, but I inserted the entire nozzle.  Soon it was overflowing and the fan was slinging water everywhere. I couldn’t get it out.

“What are you doing? Take that hose out,” he yelled at me.  There I stood, drenched to the bone, and I had had enough. 

For the first time in our young marriage, I found my backbone and yelled back, “Do it yourself if I can’t please you.” I then went back to the steps pouting with water still pouring out of the car and off me. I expected him to really be angry, but instead he made me angry because he started belly-laughing. My unexpected response amused him.

I Corinthians 13 (the Message)

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

² If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

^3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

^8-10 Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

¹¹ When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.

¹² We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

¹³ But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love. Our love words and our love deeds were never perfected, but verse 13  – And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (NIV) were the guidelines we followed for 56 years for a happy marriage