It’s the little things that count!
Through our ongoing study in 1 Cor. 13 each Sunday morning this summer, the Lord has been clarifying the various dimensions of how we’re to love one another in Christ. One of the striking implications is that this holy love is to be cultivated day-by-day, and moment-by-moment. In other words, we’re to love each other not simply in sensational, extraordinary, grandiose ways, but in the very routine, ordinary, and seemingly mundane rhythms of our daily lives. It’s not just dying to self, and putting others interests above our own in the “big things”, but doing this in a thousand and one little ways every single day. R.C.H. Lenski says it well:
“Paul does not describe love in its greatest works, sacrifices, martyrdoms, triumphs; he goes into the ordinary circumstances of life as we meet them day by day and shows us the picture of love as it must be under these…(So) be a true, everyday Christian in the exercise of love, then all great triumphs of love will take care of themselves. He who fails in the ordinary works of love will not even have an opportunity when the supreme moment for the performance of the extraordinary arrives.” (The Interpretation of St. Paul’s 1st & 2nd Epistles to the Corinthians, p. 561)
As you consider how God would have you to keep “pursuing love” (1 Cor. 14:1), in the power of His Holy Spirit, think about practical ways He would have you to sacrificially love the specific people who are a part of your daily life – in your home, in the church, and beyond. For their good, His glory, and the spread of the Gospel.
And rejoice all the more that our exalted Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, perfectly loves you moment-by-moment, into eternity!
Growing with you,
Greg