This week’s foray is titled “Inseperable as the Trinity.” It is part 1 of a new series I’m doing on Faith, Hope, and Love as the foundation of the joyful life Jesus invites us into.
Anchor
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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.
And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.— 1 Corinthians 13: 8-13
Sea
Scripture—our text that reveals God running through the veins of human life—is full of glorious mysteries.
I have been reading the Bible since I was six years old, and there are passages that I still don’t understand. I grasp a certain meaning on one level, but then I sense there’s still more I’m just not getting.
One such passage is from the end of 1st Corinthians 13. Paul is finishing his inspired discourse on love. You know, the one you hear at every wedding, “Love is patient, love is kind…” It is such a shame that we restrict our application of this text to romantic love when the Greek word agape is more expansive, meant to inspire and ground every human action.
Over and over again, we hear the litany: love is patient, love is kind, love does not boast, it does not envy, it keeps no record of wrongs…The King James translates love as charity, which recovers the sense that this description is meant to characterize how believers live towards the world, not just our partners. We might start with our most intimate circle, but there is no mistaking that this dynamic love is meant to undergird not just how we treat our husbands and wives but how we treat literally EVERYONE.
Of course, this is impossible without the Spirit of God. Good thing, He’s around.
Anyway, at the end of the rapturous passage. Paul says: “Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.”
I find this to be the chapter’s crescendo and its deep mystery, like a song that ends abruptly on a note you were not expecting. I’ve played this verse over and over in my mind. What is he saying? It seems significant, the essence of all true spirituality, but I have struggled to lay my finger on it.
Paul seems to be saying many things are good, but only three things remain. Only three things last. Only three are eternal. Could this be a clue to the nature of God's self? A hallmark of the trinity?
I think Paul wants us to see that these three things—faith, hope, and love—are not just important; they are inseparable as the Trinity themself.
Many of us (myself included) have been doggedly pursuing romantic love. The Burj al-Khalifa divorce rate, the hours spent swiping on dating sites, and the endless proliferation of shows like Love is Blind testify to this obsessive pursuit of romance. But how many of us can say we’re following on the heels of hope or chasing down a life of faith?
Most of us would probably say our lives are not all that hopeful or faithful. Instead, they’re more often than not filled with anxiety, stress, fear, resentment, malaise, bedrot. But the early 1st century Christians were living lives of fearlessness, openhearted sharing, generosity, and joy—lives we were promised.
I think Paul wants us to know that it is impossible to participate in agape love without hope and that it is impossible to share in love without faith. They go together or not at all. 3-in-1 and 1-in-3.
I asked Jesus what he thought about this and he said to me it’s like the left and right arteries in the heart. The right side of the heart does one thing, and the left side does another. One side is faith, and the other is hope. Taken together, the whole thing makes up the heart—that’s love. But you can’t have a healthy heart without each and all functioning correctly. I think they kinda work like that.
Over the following three newsletters, I will unpack what I’m learning about these three giants, how each is distinct, and how they intertwine. To give an overview: Hope is our unrealized but good desires. Faith is our relational posture and trusting action toward that desire. Love is the joy in presence regardless of where we are and what we are doing. Love is the heartbeat at the center of it all. It’s what sustains our hope and faith and is their end result.
So, journey with me as we focus on faith, hope, and love. With all that is happening in the world, we won’t make it much longer without them.
Verily,
Alysia
Sail
I was looking for a poem for this week. Langston Hughes’ name came to mind. He actually has a poem called “Hope” that I thought about including, but “Daybreak in Alabama” seemed to contain all three. I see hope in the poet’s dream to become a composer, faith in the knowledge that good things and tall trees come from uncertain circumstances—“the swamp and mist—” and I see love in the community of people he so joyfully describes reaching out for one another. My friends recently attended a church service in Dubai, where over 100 nationalities were represented. I bet it felt something like daybreak in Alabama.
Daybreak in Alabama - Langston Hughes
When I get to be a colored composer
I'm gonna write me some music about
Daybreak in Alabama
And I'm gonna put the purtiest songs in it
Rising out of the ground like a swamp mist
And falling out of heaven like soft dew
I'm gonna put some tall tall trees in it
And the scent of pine needles
And the smell of red clay after rain
And long red necks
And poppy colored faces
And big brown arms
And the field daisy eyes
Of black and white black white black people
And I'm gonna put white hands
And black hands and brown and yellow hands
And red clay earth hands in it
Touching everybody with kind fingers
Touching each other natural as dew
In that dawn of music when I
Get to be a colored composer
And write about daybreak
In Alabama.
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