For many years, one of my favorite parts of the Christmas season has been an unabashedly Christian concert that takes place at Disneyland each year called Candlelight. It is a truly magnificent experience, telling the Christmas story through orchestra, handbells, soloists, celebrity narrators, herald trumpets, and a truly enormous choir. For many years, the last reading in the script was a poem called “One Solitary Life” by James Allen Francis, which was well-loved for how eloquently it described how all of human history pivots on this one man from such a humble place.
A few years ago, a number of fans of Candlelight were irritated to find “One Solitary Life” swapped out for 1 Corinthians 13. You know, the Love Chapter, frequently read at weddings with no direct tie to the Christmas story. Quite a few people saw it as an attempt to make the concert more politically correct and were irritated by what felt like the removal of Jesus from this unabashedly Christian concert. I used to share that irritation--I really loved “Solitary Life”--but as our society slowly descended into greater levels of division and brutality, I came to see the value of using such a public, Christian venue to remind the world of the value of love. 1 Corinthians 13 may never mention Jesus by name or refer to the Christmas story, but it defines love in a way that is only possible because Jesus showed up and lived it for all of us to see. The kind of love 1 Corinthians 13 describes is truly impossible to cultivate by human efforts alone. After all, it says “it is not self-seeking.” Unlike the cushy romantic love the rest of Disneyland tends to celebrate, the love in 1 Corinthians 13 is high cost with little immediate reward. It’s the kind of love that motivated the Almighty Creator of the Universe to become flesh in a poor family and eventually march to the cross of His own free will. It’s a fierce kind of love that concerns itself more with what is needed than what is wanted, that works for the good of all with little concern for self. Compare that to your last Facebook interaction. Compare it to how people describe their political or cultural or religious “enemies.” More personally, compare it to the kind of love you have for your own family. We love so imperfectly, even in the situations in which love is easiest to come by. Nothing tests the strength of love quite like daily life and the ominous choice between the pleasure of their company vs. everyone’s physical health. A prayer to love more like Jesus is an invitation to let God help you grow. The beautiful thing about love is that the potential to love better is boundless, just as God’s love is boundless. There are always new ways to love different kinds of people, as well as new sacrifices to be made as new situations come up. The love that 1 Corinthians 13 talks about grows and matures over time, becoming more and more like the love Jesus has for us. Because love happens within relationships, it is often helpful to pray about ways to love specific people. Do you need to grow in how you love your spouse? Your children? Your brothers or sisters (of any age)? Your co-workers? Your boss? Starting with specific people keeps you grounded in the reality that true love is concrete, not abstract. It does not consist of fond feelings (those are a nice side effect of love from time to time), but of deliberate decision and action. To focus on even one person and learn how to love them well will influence you to love others all the better. Along the way, you will get to know God better. He made each person in His own image. As you learn to love another, you get to know them better, which allows you to see more and more of God’s image in them. Different people display different pieces of God’s image, so learning to love a variety of people reveals more facets of God’s beautiful character. People who are hard to love may have something to teach you about a part of His character You haven’t had occasion to see before. In all cases, the image grows more complete, piece by piece, and along the way more of it will be revealed to others through you.
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AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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