Who is more merciful?
Is there anyone you have met more kind?
Both gentle and powerful at once? 
Who is as courageous?
Who takes greater risks for your love? 
Who else truly understands the struggles and injustices that have shaped you?
Who was the first to see your young heart break between your ribcage and grieve it more than you did?  And Who has given up more of Himself just to mend it - just to have you and be with you? 
Who is more generous, giving you all the earth, the watercolour skies and breathing tides? 
Who gives you song, and who is in the movement of your dance, who emptied His paintbox to give you red through violet?
Can anyone else recognize you at the sound of the rhythm of your heartbeat? 
Is there anyone else who sits inside the heat of your tears or strives to catch your reverberating laughter? 
Who knew your name in the depths of your mothers womb? And Who still calls it again and again and again and again, with endless patience, and all-believing hope? 
Who can keep up with your runaway legs - who else even bothers to? 
There is a God who does not love, but IS love and you exist to know this Love(to know Him) Do you not think He desires to know you too?  The strongest, truest love you’ve felt from a parent, a lover, your best friend, pales in comparison to His affection for you. I am wary right now, at the risk of sounding trite and redundant by saying: God loves you. I hear our collective mutters “Yeah, OK, ‘Jesus-loves-me-this-I-know’, I get it…” But do we really GET IT? There is so much evidence in all our restlessness, our materialism, our anger, our striving, our gossip, our insecurities, our fear that tells me we don’t actually GET IT.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7 is a neat little passage we see often used to 1) be cute 2) recite at weddings 3) get nervous about when we fail to see our own character line up with what is described (I definitely scored a 0 on the Love-O-Meter waiting at the DMV today). But if the God we have actually embodies Love then what if the writer was not, in fact, talking about us at all (just like us to always be thinking everything is just about ourselves and our own behaviour modification) What if instead of a neat, cute passage about what we can do, the writer was actually trying to draw us a picture of Perfection, to give us a glimpse of God who is Love…

“God is patient and kind. God is not envious nor does He boast, He is not proud.  God is not self-seeking or easily angered - He keeps no record of wrongs. He does not rejoice during injustice but rejoices when truth wins out. God never gives up on us, He never loses faith in us, God is hopeful for us and He will endure through every circumstance!”

Let us do our best to truly believe in a God who is Love. A God whose Love does not get lost in the clouds but is deep and intimate with you, who walks with you and enjoys the things you enjoy.  He is not too proud or envious to give desires, people, interests and talents for you to cultivate and share.  Put aside your feeble attempts to do anything at all - to preach anything at all - to sacrifice anything at all - to Love anything at all, without first understanding and resting in how much God loves YOU and likes YOU - despite weakness or sin or failure - Love is right now, right here, for you, forever. This is good, friends, and I think it can be trusted!

(c) Stephanie Diaz-Schumm