All are welcome to join us for church on Sunday, February 2.  Church school runs during the church service.  The Annual General Meetings will be held immediately after the service.

Here are Rev. Marlene’s notes on the upcoming service.

“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13

Since Valentine’s Day is celebrated in February, 1 Corinthians 13 feels like the natural passage to start off the month. It is one of Paul’s most loved and quoted passages and challenges us to prioritize love in every aspect of life. Paul begins by emphasizing that even the greatest spiritual gifts or acts of faith are meaningless without love. Love is the essential foundation for everything.

He then moves on to the characteristics of love. Love is described as patient, kind, and selfless, contrasting behaviors like envy, arrogance, and resentment. It rejoices in truth, bears and endures all things.

Then, he describes the eternal nature of love. Spiritual gifts like prophecy, tongues, and knowledge are temporary, but love is eternal. Paul illustrates how our understanding is partial now, but in eternity, we will fully know as we are fully known. He ends with the supremacy of love. Paul concludes with a powerful statement: faith, hope, and love are foundational, but love is the greatest of them all.

Here are some questions that I came up with about this passage.

• In what ways might we sometimes focus on “doing” rather than “loving”?
• Which of the characteristics of love resonates most with you? Which characteristic do you feel that you might need to work on?
• What are the qualities of love that are most difficult to practice?
• How might our relationships change if we practiced Paul’s kind of love more intentionally?
• What does it mean to “know fully” or to be “fully known” by God? How does this impact our faith?
• How does this chapter challenge us to think differently about what matters most in life?