But the Greatest Is Love

There are moments in life when you desperately want answers.

You replay conversations in your mind. You ask questions. You seek advice. You try to understand what happened, where things changed, and how you can make them right.

Sometimes you find the answers.

Sometimes you don't.

Recently, I found myself in situations involving people I deeply care about. I was left with more questions than answers. The more I searched for understanding, the more I realised that some situations are simply too complex for me to untangle.

Human hearts are complicated.

Pain is complicated.

Relationships are complicated.

As I sat with these thoughts, my mind went to Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 13:13:

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

I found myself praying,

"Lord, I don't understand this. I don't understand people's reactions. I don't understand the silence. I don't understand the distance. But if Your Word says the greatest is love, then I choose to stand there."

Then I remembered another passage.

In Ephesians 3, Paul prays that we may know the love of Christ, a love that surpasses knowledge.

That has always fascinated me.

How do you know something that is beyond knowing?

Perhaps that is the point.

God's love was never meant to be fully explained. It is meant to be experienced. It is meant to be received. And it is meant to flow through us.

Psalm 136 echoes the same truth. Repeatedly, the psalmist remembers what God has done:

He created.

His love endures forever.

He rescued.

His love endures forever.

He provided.

His love endures forever.

The psalm never explains how God's love works. It simply points to what His love does.

That was enough to quiet my heart.

I realised that when my understanding reaches its limit, God's love has not reached its limit.

Perhaps that is why love is the greatest.

Not because it answers every question, but because it remains when explanations run out.

There are people you may never fully understand.

Someone whose choices confuse you.

Someone whose silence hurts you.

Someone who wounded you without explanation.

Someone you cannot reach.

Someone you wish would come home.

Our instinct is to search for answers.

God invites us to remain in His love.

I have come to believe that one of the first things God's love does is protect our own hearts.

It keeps bitterness from taking root.

It keeps resentment from becoming our language.

It keeps us from becoming the very thing that wounded us.

We often hope that God's love will change the other person.

Sometimes the first person it changes is us.

Perhaps we spend too much of our lives asking God to explain people, when He is inviting us to love them.

We may never fully understand how His love works.

Paul himself said it surpasses knowledge.

But we can trust the One from whom it comes.

Faith will one day become sight.

Hope will one day be fulfilled.

But the greatest is love.