Where 1 Corinthians 13 Leads
It’s 2/26 at 8:47 PM. Around 3 I was tired. It looked like a storm was rolling in. Around 4 I just took a shower and went to “nap”. Now the last of Monday is gone. I’ll spend a little time here and then return to sleep – probably eating nothing between now and the sunrise.
Awakened now and being the filthy, disgusting, gin quaffing, tobacco chewing, stinking old man I am Not, I am compelled by a friendly force whose name is never revealed to sit and write again.
All things happen for God’s good reasons, especially those of revenge, horror sin, and kindness, perfection, and Love.
1 Corinthians 13
13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I spoke as* a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
[*NIV renders this “talked like” – which I returned to the modernized King James for poetic rhythmic and personal ascetic reasons.]
We all have our unusual moments and mine come upon awakening when I received a revelation.
“If I knew then what I know now….” the woman answered her friends, and so life often feels this way to me. Many are the pathways of my life that would differ, if I had had God’s wisdom then instead of submitting to God’s Way much later. He allowed me to make all the mistakes I wanted, and one of them is an injury I carry with me. It reminds me of my mistake. Tonight I got a quick flash of what it means.
It is my view that the entire universe is a mathematical construct beyond my present understanding. It should be likened to a finely woven woman’s seamless stocking. It is perfect until sin appears. When sin appears it makes a small damage point which turns into an ever-widening imperfection, a black hole sucking into itself everything good and evil, which like the run in a stocking threatens to ruin the whole of the cloth.
Anger, revenge, battles, murders, and wars bring to someone a temporary satisfaction as an enemy is vanquished and a people murdered or strewn across territory, or enslaved; even all three. This leads only to more future misery.
The way of love is longer now, but will, must, take all battles and be totally victorious at time’s end. Indeed we are near time’s end now. A new beginning looms as if a fearsome fog lying upon the sea into which we are destined to sail.
Tho we cannot see what is beyond that wall of white puffy mist we can be confident it will be better than what we experience presently. We, like a jailed man hoping desperately that any move to other quarters will be better than the present, are going there in that new age, where anger and revenge are quenched, it’s vicious oppositional Principality shall be deceased, and the new Power of Love will rule then and forever more.
We see through this glass darkly, but then we will see face to face.
1 Corinthians 13:12 King James Version (KJV)
12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
through a glass darkly definition. To see “through a glass” — a mirror — “darkly” is to have an obscure or imperfect vision of reality. The expression comes from the writings of the Apostle Paul; he explains that we do not now see clearly, but at the end of time, we will do so.
We are frustrated with this world. Many are the political observers who comment to one another, nodding their agreement across cyberspace, feeling comforted by one-another, they can agree with an unmet friend before some end reveals itself.
The end will leave evil vanquished, terror’s corpse to be buried, a shattered world reminded that Sin in all its manifestations gave us little satisfaction, and only a world in need of healing, our necessary spiritual recrudescence now finally begun.
The tear in the universe leading to a new beginning….
Regrets we shall have as I do my injury gained in a martial arts school, forever reminding me of my mistakes. But in that time the healing shall become complete, the injuries will be only memories, the sins will be forgiven, and the foundations of God’s New World laid. In that day our frustrations will be solved and sin will be no more. In that day we will see clearly face to face. The fog will lift and reality will become clear. There everyone will know true freedom and everyone will know the comfort of smiles basking in the eternal light of Our Savior, Our ultimate guide, Our Lord, Yah, Jesus, HaShem, one and the same by several names, forever teaching love without end.
Stephen Newdell 2/26/18
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