Love

So I know what your all thinking about when I title this blog with "love".... and it's not that kind of love. However I did get to go to my first professional rugby game last night and fell in love with #10! But besides that my focus has been on myself. Plus heck we only have 11 boys here and I cannot let myself fall in love with a South African boy or my mom would kill me! Besides that, this blog post has been dedicated to the things God has been challenging me to do this semester and that is simply to love. The church I am attending while in South Africa is going through the book of 1 Corinthians and one Sunday the pastor spoke on the topic of love. I have heard 1 Corinthians 13 all my life being quoted at weddings, movies, and so on. I have taken it for granted and it wasn't until I was at that service did I discover the real meaning of it. 1 Corinthians 13 goes like this, 

"If I speak in the tongues 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,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." 

God has been drawing my attention to these verses over and over again on this trip. I never knew why he kept directing it until a couple days ago. I began to realize that to genuinely love someone you must see them through the eyes of God. God sees the best in everyone, but we have been led into seeing everyones faults. Not only am I beginning to learn to love and see the best in me but to see the people around me as God would see them. We were driving back from somewhere one day when I had a lightbulb moment. Something just clicked in me why God had continued to put these verses on my mind. This up and coming fall I will be getting 12 sophomores in which I will help in becoming leaders to freshman. I need to be able to learn to love them and see the unique things in each and everyone of them. Because then will I be able to fully understand and love them. I have to keep reminding myself throughout the day to think in the mindset of how God loves. For now I take up the challenge that God has given me.