REKINDLE-GETTING FIRED UP FOR A NEW YEAR: LOVE

Happy New Year!  The year has started in a hectic fashion and most all of us are wondering when will we get beyond the pandemic.  Some people are warning us that things will never be the same and all we can hope for is a “new normal.”  2020 was filled with frustration, anger, violence, and death.  Where is the hope?  In our sermon series Rekindle-Getting Fired Up for a New Year we turn to the one reality that will help us renew our spirits and our lives.  This one reality is “love” and it is the title of the sermon.  How do we rekindle love, especially when it seems to be rarer than toilet paper?  This week, we turn to 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 a passage most of us know, but it points us to a greater and more powerful love.  Human love is conditional.  It says, “I will love you if…you act as I want you to…you support my political ideas…you do things that please me.”  However, God says, “I love you unconditionally in Jesus Christ, so you can love each other.”  How can we rekindle our power to love?  The Apostle Paul helps us find the power of God’s love that will ignite our ability to love others in his name!  May you sense the warmth and goodness of God’s love for you as you read 1 Corinthians 13:1-8: 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. (NIV)