Love is... patient

I really don't think it's a coincidence that this is the first description of love in 1 Corinthians 13.  Yet I think Christians often skim over it without contemplating the meaning.  It's easy to do this in today's world.  It feels like love should be almost instant- like everything else in America, like that 2 hour romance movie.  But beautiful love is not like that.

Patience means waiting.  Patience means enduring.  Patience means sacrifice and sometimes pain. Patience in different Bible translations means "suffering long."  According to those movies and the Bachelor, love doesn't involve much suffering.   Oh but it does.

Beautiful love holds out when it wants to let go.  Beautiful love doesn't settle but waits for the best.  Beautiful love takes time to develop and is not only a feeling.  Beautiful love will wait days, weeks, months and still love.  Beautiful love is not forced but is developed and deepened over time. This beautiful love is patient.

So God is the only true embodiment of "beautiful love."  But as I strive to be like Him each day, I strive to show beautiful love in my life too.  The guy I marry one day will not be perfect at showing God's beautiful love, but hopefully he will understand that patience we are called to in love and how God is our ultimate example of this.  That will be truly beautiful.