If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.
(1 Corinthians 13:1-7 MSG)
And so, I think of all my earthly worries. Every decision I will make on this earth. To travel, to not travel, to marry, to not marry, to work, to not work, to study, to not study, to buy a house, to not buy a house. And when I think of it all, still my head spins. All of this. I can obtain all of this and yet is it really important? Does it really matter? Will it depict the course of my life? Will it really be the stepping stone of my success? For if I obtain an earthly treasure, will it hold any eternal value?
So my soul…set your mind on things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of my Father.
Without love I am nothing.
If all I am is love, is it enough. Should God be silent on our queries and questions of the will for our life purely because aside from love, he does not mind? And does he mind? Is he concerned with my choosing? Is he concerned about where my feet may rest and upon which shore of ocean they wander?
Without love I am nothing.
Have we been brain-washed into thinking success? Into thinking that without a degree we ‘wont make it’ in this life?
If all I have is nothing, yet I have love. Then I am something.
Because without love I am nothing.
Did I love my peers? Did I really love my co-workers? Did I really do all things in love?Did the boy on the bus in year eight feel loved from me as I passed him buy in the aisle? Was love really my mission? Did I really wake up each morning with the deliberate plan to love?
Or was my focus on success? On striving? On completing the task that was set out for me to do? Told for me to do by the world around me… Oh what would it take, for me to learn. For me to undo everything I know for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of love?
Without love I am nothing.
If I didn’t have love, then who was I? What was the purpose. It was for nothing and for no one.
And so here I am. Pondering my next decision. Regarding my past. Calling it all into account for the sake of love.
Who knows when their hour will come or what the future holds? No one but the Lord almighty. But if we might look at it the way He does, if we might open our hearts to the spirit to see that all of this is nothing but dust.
Without love I am nothing.
And so, I conclude, it doesn’t matter. Nothing that you do matters unless you love. You could be a nurse, a counsellor, a child, a mother… and all of it pointless if you do not love.
Oh my, what twenty years has taken too long to learn, and only when we are undone do we surely come to know it in its purest form. Surrender breeds the contention of truth.
And so have I trudged this weary life, all of it pondering, my thoughts wild at what I must obtain.
To ‘set yourself up’ they say. To ‘buy a house’ they say. To ‘study a degree’ they say. To ‘raise a family’ they say. Yet, who, tell me who around me sets the course of their being, devotes themselves completely and honestly to just ‘love’. What a simple task.
And yet I can see why The Spirit humours himself at my questioning. It is so simple. Yet he says again. Yet over and over my mind has been taught: ‘Make something of yourself’, that old familiar striving, that old familiar pattern. Yet how many lives have I loved without a degree? How many people have I touched just by being me?
Ah, this life. All but a fleeting moment.
And without love, I am nothing.
And so be it with the accusations, with every pretence that sets itself up against the word of God. And so, I say it again; without love I am nothing. In all that I am, in all that I do, may I be love.
May we be a bride that strives not, worries not, yet loves in every form. Pure love.
Shannon Munyard is home to the Adelaide Hills where she works as a horse riding instructor and equine assisted learning facilitator at a non-for profit youth campsite. Shannon is passionate about authenticity, and seeing people connected to their hearts. She loves the outdoors, bush camping, pondering deep questions and Jesus.
Shannon Munyard is home to the Adelaide Hills where she works as a horse riding instructor and equine assisted learning facilitator at a non-for profit youth campsite. Shannon is passionate about authenticity, and seeing people connected to their hearts. She loves the outdoors, bush camping, pondering deep questions and Jesus.