“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
First Comes Love. The treats were cold, creamy, and delicious. We wiped up the melts and drips from the ice cream and piled back in the car. Traffic was heavy, requiring my full attention. My grandson began pestering his sister, who was trying in the nicest way to ignore him. That didn’t work so he upped the teasing, and starting tapping her knee. She asked him once, twice, a third time to “Stopppp it!” He was getting the better of her, but she knew how to get him. She began softly chanting, “…. Sittin’ in a tree, k-I-s-s-I-n-g; first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes with the baby carriage.” I remembered the rhyme; as kids, we used to recite it jumping rope. When my grandson’s face began to turn red, his sister knew she had him.
First comes love. This morning the scripture verse on my calendar was: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, and peace”. I thought, “LOVE, joy, and peace.” First is love. That is the most important. Without it, can we have the others?
I was mulling this over. Surely, all of these; indeed everything, flows from the fountain of Love. Love is the prerequisite to the others. There is no joy without love, no peace without love.
The 13th chapter of Corinthians is the great ‘Love chapter’ quoted often at weddings (“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”). And 1st John, chapter 4, is loaded with LOVE stuff, especially 7-12 and 16-18.
Yes, the evidence (fruit) in believers’ lives is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22) And first comes Love. “We love because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19)
Sally I. Kennedy, ©2009
Irish Thursdays Weekly Devotionals /http://www.sallyikennedy.com