Love: the More Excellent Way Epiphany 4C

The wonderful and awful thing about consumerism are the mountains of stuff that we can buy, sell, trade, swap and throwaway. But all of our stuff, even the most prized and valuable physical treasures, can in the flash of a fire or whoosh of a tornado be swept away.

Ask anyone who has been through a disaster just how fragile our material existence really is. Ask anyone who's lost everything if they've yet to find any easy way of getting it all back. Even the things we prize the most can and do simply disappear.

But there is something priceless that can survive disasters.

Love.

Love is fragile and easily damaged by human actions but love can endure even in the worst that this world and the Devil can throw at it. Paul's word's about Faith, Hope, and Love in First Corinthians 13 have been quoted for centuries in weddings. Even Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn's characters in Wedding Crashersknew to expect that Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians would be part of the day.



Couples in love with one another love these words. But Paul wasn't talking about only one romantic dimension of love. He was inviting us into a discussion about every dimension of love. This kind of love starts in the smallest unit of community, the relationship of two people in marriage, but it doesn't stop there. Love between spouses is the starting point but not the ending point. Love only begins there bringing into the world beyond ourselves.