Agape is something of the understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men.

Those who sowed with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed, will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves. Psalm 126:6–7

I have been reading this morning about love. Love in the hard situations. And of course, my little yowling cats in their broken rudeness no way stack up against the evils of ISIS, but as I slowly work my way through the Jesus Loves ISIS thirty-day prayer guide “Because Love Never Fails,” I am reminded of what is true.

And I reread Martin Luther King’s “Love your Enemies” sermon because I think it is the most beautiful thing ever.

Take me past the outer courts

Into the Holy Place

Past the brazen alters

Lord, I want to see Your face

And today Nicole and Cate and I are going to meet before school to pray for our little Thunderbirds. We are going to pray that God will bring them into the calling that He has for their lives. We will speak over them that God has good for them and that they will seek Him with all of their hearts.

But even more, I will pray that I will be filled with the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And I’m foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.

The most recalcitrant bent. Ah, fourth period, here we come.

Oh yeah, maybe a flashlight too.

My prayer for you is that you may have still more love—a love that is full of knowledge and wise insight. I want you to be able always to recognise the highest and the best, and to live sincere and blameless lives until the day of Jesus Christ. I want to see your lives full of true goodness, produced by the power that Jesus Christ gives you to the praise and glory of God. Philippians 4:1

Well my bags are packed.  The seven or eight tightly rolled up shirts. A couple boxes of wet wipes. The purple sleeping pad. Trash bags. My Spanish New Testament. A journal. Yes, I remembered my passport. Newspaper and flour and balloons for making piñatas. Sunscreen. A water bottle.

And my heart is bubbling up with joy as I consider the kiddos. The ones who were willing to push aside sleeping in late and texting and Instagram in exchange for clouds of dust and latrines that reek of disinfectant and no showers and lots of pato, pato, pavo, and a long bus ride there and back. All this for a glimpse of God at work–this is my prayer for them. May they may still have more love, because as is stamped across yet one more Mexico Outreach t-shirt: Love Never Fails.

It’s been a full few weeks…Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Highlands Ranch, Colorado. And now, El Buen Samaritano in Colonia Mayos in Mexicali. Pastor Humberto Palma R. who wants to serve all of the people. Particularly serving breakfast to the children. And teaching the Word of God to drug addicts and alcoholics and to everyone else. So we have our little dramas and our crayons and our soccer balls and even two lacrosse sets and three guitars, and who knows if there are sidewalks for our chalk. And we shall see what we shall see. Love Never Fails. That’s what is says across my t-shirt.

And we have that Bible in five different languages: English, Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, and Russian

Some in the crowd were shouting one thing, some another. And as he could not learn the facts because of the uproar, he ordered him to be brought into the barracks. Acts 21:34

Things certainly haven’t changed much in the past two thousand years.  There are still a bunch of folks still worried about the rules of religion, do this, don’t do that; think this, don’t think that. However, Paul says our actions will cease, our prophesying is dim, what we know will pass away. These are good things, but not what really matters.  All the neat little rules belong to the weaker brothers. We are to put aside our childish squabbling and choose what will remain: faith, hope and love.  

Lots of stories are coming out these days, about my dad, and the impact he had on so many lives.  For instance he taught Ali how to shake hands properly. But there is one that grips my momma’s heart.  

So one of my daughters, well all of my daughters, grew up on the mission field, surrounded by committed Christians of every creed and culture.  They were in church pretty much every time the doors opened.  They went to Christian schools and memorized Bible verses with the best of them.  But they were losing the story in the midst of the cluttered verbiage of premillennialism, dispensationalism, predestinationalism colored lines and charts that spoke nothing of an all powerful loving God, but mostly spoke of who was in and who was out. LIttle children drawing ism lines in the sand and fighting about things they do not understand.

One of my girls was pretty angry at this god created in the image of man.  If he was real, she was not so sure she wanted to be part of his club.  And on top of it all, she was all signed up to spend the summer with a overly cheerful short-term mission group and there was no way to get out of it all.  And she was absolutely unhappy.  And of course, one of the requirements was that every single person spend one entire hour every single morning reading the Bible.  Grumble.  And of course, her duffle bag with everything in it including her Bible had been stolen or lost or whatever.  So there she was, sitting alone in the jungle with her backpack and very crabby at Someone. Well not alone.

So she rummaged around in her backpack.  Nothing else to do. And lo and behold, her sneaky grandpa and done his little trick when she wasn’t looking.  He had slipped a handful of his ever-tucked-into-his-shirt pocket little Bibles. Just in case.  So my daughter, suckled on the word of God started flipping through the familiar verses. Verses of comfort, assurance and salvation...from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith is in Christ Jesus...for by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God: Not of works, lest any man shall boast...for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. But He sent not His son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved...

And somehow, there God met her in a fresh new way.  His way. Not our way. And I have been rereading and rereading 1 Corinthians 13.  In a fresh new way.
  

Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Love never fails.  

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.  For God so loved the world.