Between Living & Loving: A Practice In Patience, Persistence, and Presence

In this sacred space, love is our ministry. Love is our motivation. Love is our moment to let God’s glory be felt by others who may not know they are loved no matter what.

some birthday advice on practicing love from 
I Corinthians 13:4-8a

Twenty-three years ago, my lovely wife and I discovered we were going to be parents. This was both exciting and terrifying news, for me. I had always wanted children but was also afraid because I knew the kind of child I was.

Today we are celebrating our daughter, who is officially twenty-one today. Those of you who can count, you might be thinking that was the world’s longest pregnancy. Although it might have felt that way at times, there’s a reason why the math doesn’t add up.
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Sadly, we lost our first baby early in the first trimester. In the space between the finding out the good news and learning the bad, we experienced all sorts of emotions - including guilt and shame. We kept convincing ourselves that there must have been something we did to deserve such a cruel punishment. 

Eventually, I learned an important lesson from that traumatic experience. Life is a fragile gift. It seems so obvious now but back then it was all about living hard and playing harder. It was all about me, or about us. And tragically, it often takes something like losing something you love to wake you up to the reality that what you have can be taken away in a blink of an eye.
 
Disastrous events like hurricanes and earthquakes, school shootings, are strange, ugly gifts in that they remind us that the only guarantee in life we have is this one single second. That’s all. Just this one second right now. In the space between our first and last breath, this one moment is our only assurance that we will live to see the next second.
 
It’s only this small, seemingly insignificant moment that really matters in the big picture. It’s this single second we cling to hope by keeping our faith in the One who loves us onto the next space and time.
 
In the 13th chapter of his first letter to the churches in Corinth, the Apostle Paul speaks of God’s love like this:

 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.  (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a)

Paul wrote, “Love never ends.” If you have ever been in a relationship that hasn’t worked out, it’s easy to roll your eyes at Paul’s declaration. But what if we look at his words from a different perspective? What if we replace the word “love” with “God,” then I think we would gain a better perspective of what Paul is saying.
 
John the Evangelist wrote, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). If we believe God is infinite. Then so too is love. God’s love is eternal, never-ending. The author of the psalms constantly describes God’s love as “steadfast” and “everlasting” and “enduring.”
 
God is always there, whether we know it or not. And so too is God’s love. Henri Nouwen, calls God our first love. This is what John also discovered when he wrote, “Let us love one another because God loved us first” (1 John 4:19).
 
We are born with God’s love already in us. We don’t earn God’s love or deserve it. Like grace, it’s given to anyone and everyone. God gives us love, so we can live it and share it with one another.
 
Knowing this should be enough to stop us from hating and killing each other. But sadly, it’s not that easy. Very few people know that they are loved without any conditions. It even caught the prophet Micah off guard. He wrote, "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression? You don’t retain your anger forever because you delight in steadfast love." (Micah 7:18).
 
When Fiona was born, I finally understood what unconditional, steadfast love meant. No matter what she did, I was going to love her. The twenty-one years since then would prove that giving unconditional love is not as easy as it sounds.

Like I learned during my daughter's tween years, love requires a lot of practice of being Patient, Persistent, and Present. These are three attributes of love that I want to talk about next.
 
In our reading Paul wrote, “Love is patient.” Throughout scripture God is described as patient and loving, kind, gracious, forgiving, and merciful, and every compassionate quality we could ever imagine. Our job is to learn from God’s ways and treat others the same. Which is exactly what Jesus did.
 
Jesus not only showed extreme patience with his disciples who constantly screwed-up like teenagers, but he was also patient to the multitudes who constantly came to him for help or to challenge his teachings. As Jesus clearly demonstrated, love requires a lot of patience.

In Proverbs we find, “It’s better to be patient than a warrior, and better to have self-control than to capture a city” (Prov.16:32). If only Fiona knew this as a child, her sister probably wouldn’t need therapy. 

​Each second is a second chance to make things right.
 
In the space between living and loving we are only given this moment to make a difference.  Despite the obstacles that get in our way, God still needs us to show up. So to stand in love one must always be persistent.
 
Paul wrote, “Love bears all things, and hopes and endures all things.” From dealing with family to facing our foes, we must preserve with love leading the way. But the more we get hurt by love, the harder it can be to move forward in it.
 
But the prophet Jeremiah, who in the midst of suffering unbearable hardship, wrote, "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end…" (Lam. 3:22). As Jeremiah discovered, God doesn’t give up on us - even when we give up on God.
 
What then can we learn from God’s way that might help us love others?

Jesus had only had one mission…to usher in God’s kingdom. Although he faced constant opposition, pushback, betrayal, and even crucifixion…Jesus did not give up. And the world has been better for it.
 
I’ve lost count of how many times I threatened to sell my kids to the Irish gypsies. Yet, no matter how thin they stretched my patience, I persevered. For this I am forever grateful to my wife who made sure I did. In the Epistle of James it’s written, "Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” (James 1:2).
 
Therefore, "let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up" (Gal. 6:9). The space and time to do good is right here. In this space between living and loving, God never ends. Love never ends. Both remain ever-present if only because they are always present in us. Each one of us has love to give.
 
So, if our job is to learn from God’s ways then we must learn to always be present, because this is the space where God needs us make love grow. It doesn’t matter if we forgot to love yesterday, that time has come and gone. And worrying about if love will show up tomorrow only takes the heart’s focus off showing it in the present moment, where real pain and suffering happens in real time.

Jesus remained ever present to people needs and hurts. When he saw people suffering, he immediately showed compassion for them. He never said, I’m sorry, you’re too late, or come back tomorrow. Jesus constantly set aside his own needs to serve others where they were. In doing so, he ushered in the kingdom of heaven so that all people could feel the fullness of God’s love.

 Jesus shows us how to experience abundant life now, and not just at some later date. This requires us to be present - to see every second of life with open eyes, and an open heart. It was in this practice Thomas Merton discovered “the secret beauty in life.” That is to say there’s something inherently beautiful inside every single being. That inherent beauty is Divine love that flows in us and through us.

 There’s great power in this way of seeing life. As Merton taught, when we recognize that the secret beauty of Divine love is not just in us but also in others, we’re less apt to cheat, fight, or kill them. 

 When we recognize that we are all born with inherent beauty, then we can be patient when someone throws a fit. We can be persistent even though we want to throw up our arms and walk away. We can be present without insecurity, or fear, or anxieties getting in our way. With God’s endless and infinite love in us, we can fearlessly love one another.

In this sacred space, love is our ministry. Love is our motivation. Love is our moment to let God’s glory be felt by others who may not know they are loved no matter what.

In this moment of time, we have been given, love must be our single goal. It doesn’t need to be perfect because only God’s love is perfect. Heck, I don’t think God wants our perfection. God only wants our willingness to put love to practice in all that we do.

When we practice patience, love will come. When we practice perseverance, love will overcome. When we practice being present, love will come out, flowing in and out of us. For wherever God is, there is love. And love never ends.