the ultimate test of love...

we’ve been looking here for a while on the porch at the question, “what is love?” we’ve looked at different aspects of love. love is the most important factor in life. love is kind. the bible says love is patient, love is humble. we looked at how love does not envy. we’ve looked at how it is the key to life.

now we’re going to look at what i think is the ultimate test of love. the ultimate test of love is when somebody hurts you. how do you respond? do you have a grudge? do you get resentful? do you get full of bitterness? how do you handle it when somebody hurts you?

the bible says in 1 corinthians 13.5 (cev), love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs that others do. in other words, love doesn’t store up hurt. love doesn’t keep a grudge. love doesn’t keep score. one guy said, “when my wife and i get in an argument, she gets historical.” the other guy said, “you mean hysterical.” “no, historical. she tells me everything i’ve ever done wrong.”

love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. do you do that? i do, unfortunately, sometimes. sometimes we keep a record of wrongs so we have ammunition so when others hurt us, we can hurt them back. but the bible says love doesn’t do that.

forgiveness may be the single most difficult act of love above all the other things we’ve talked about in this series. forgiveness may be the most difficult act of love. it’s interesting that in the press conference with dana curry and heather mercer when those two girls were released from the captivity of the taliban and they were asked, “what was the most difficult thing in your afghan experience?” they said it wasn’t being imprisoned by the taliban. they said, “it was living with six women in a very small room. we had to learn to forgive each other a lot.”

just a thought from the front porch…