Patience

Just about everyone has read the verses in 1 Corinthians 13 most commonly referred to as the love verses, but have you ever stopped and thought about them? The first qualification of love is that it is patient. This makes it pretty clear to me what God thinks about the subject. When you write an essay in school, you are always told to open with a phrase that will catch people's attention and introduce your topic. This is exactly what happened with these verses. A lot of times it is too easy for us to struggle with waiting for love. As we get older we friends that are our age who are getting engaged, married or having a baby. I don't know about everyone else, but with every engagement or marriage that I hear about, I wonder why I haven't found that special person yet. Jealousy keeps me from being truly happy for the couple. Today I have started to change my prayers. Instead of asking God to bring me that special someone, I now ask for him to help be patient until the day comes when I am ready to have that forever kind of love. The kind of love that is talked about in 1 Corinthians. I believe that becoming more patient now when I am still waiting for that love, I will essentially be preparing my heart for it. I encourage you to pray for patience as well.

Your Fellow Water Walker,
-Ashlee

1 Corinthians 13

 ¹ 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 talked like 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.

*courtesy of www.biblegateway.com