Love Bears All Things Because You Do Not Bear Them Alone

The Lord is our burden-bearer, and upon Him we must lay off every care. ~Hannah Whitall Smith

Love bears all things. All things can be borne, because of love. All love will, without exception, be called upon to bear things.

Peter’s thinking could have been mine. His question is logic itself. “Jesus, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

I can almost see the scratch pad where Peter scribbled his calculations:

• My tolerance supply,
• divided by how annoyed I am by each grievance (on a scale of 1-10),
• equals the moment I say arrivederci to this relationship.

Jesus hands Peter the red-circled answer. Eyes distant, his focus on a not-too-distant Friday, he swallows hard and whispers the correct solution. How often should I forgive? Seven times seven times seven times seven….

Love bears all things because on the cross they have already been borne. Now there is never a burden we carry alone.

Jesus says, “I give you the burdens of love, now let me help you bear them.”

Love Forbears

Sometimes it is good for us to have troubles and hardships, for they often call us back to our own hearts. Once there, we know ourselves to be strangers in this world, and we know that we may not believe in anything that it has to offer.

Sometimes it is good that we put up with people speaking against us, and sometimes it is good that we thought of as bad and flawed, even when we do good things and have good intentions. Such troubles are often aids to humility, and they protect us from pride.

Indeed, we are sometimes better at seeking God when people have nothing but bad things to say about us and when they refuse to give us credit for the good things we have done!

That being the case, we should so root ourselves in God that we do not need to look for comfort anywhere else.

(Thomas à Kempis 1380-1471)

What are you bearing for love of Christ? Will you allow him to lighten your load?

This is post ten of our Lent To Love: A Return to the Source series on 1 Corinthians 13. Join us on the journey to Easter! Scroll up, look right to subscribe to e-mail.

 

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