Reality.
What is it?
We all ask this question. What is reality? I sometimes find myself seeing the world around me as the realest of real things that exist. Other times I fins myself feeling like I am walking in Narnia- as if this world is the least of real things that exist. I know in my inner being that this world is not true reality. That my heart aches and moans for something greater, something purer, something unimaginable. I yearn and long to live apart from brokenness. I yearn to eat from the tree of life that is for the HEALING of the nations. To snuggle in the mane of the Lion of Judah. To dance on higher hills. To speak with Shadrach about what it was like to literally walk out of a furnace with Jesus Christ on earth. To bathe in rivers of living water and be enveloped completely by grace and love. As I daydream about the day I will see Jesus face to face, I come to terms that I am on this earth, that there is reality right here. Jesus did not place me as a worthless stone on the shore of eternity. As I long for new creation and seeing Him clearly- face to face (!) just as Paul did in his letter to the Roman church, I find myself in another letter he wrote- one to the church at Corinth:
Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:4-13
Many of us can recite these verses over and over again and have read them hundreds of times and quote it for earthly relationships but how deep has it sunk into your heart? In all of this I see that it truly is love that is the greatest of all things remaining. “So now faith, hope, and love abide (remain), but the greatest of these is love” (1 Corinthians 13:13). Faith and hope will both come to a completion. Faith will be complete when we are face to face with Jesus Christ and hope will be complete when we are in New Creation. But love will never come to a completion. God has loved us from the womb and His love for us will never come to completion. Even when we are face to face with Jesus and as we walk in New Creation, we will still be loved by the Rock of ages. And we will still have the privilege of loving Him with our entire being.
Truly nothing can separate us from this love and truly it is the greatest of all things because it will remain for eternity. And if “God is love” (1 John 4:8) then the truest reality of life is love. If God is alpha and omega, beginning and end, then we can say that Love is alpha and Omega, that Love is beginning and end. The deepest sense of reality can be summed up in one word: Love.
Blessings,
Sage, Summer Intern
