When Love Fails

Why do we think love ends?  Is it just me?  I've been thinking about this a good deal lately, and I think it's more than just me that struggles with an underlying expectation that at some end, love ends.  It fails.  I might be so bold as to count it something our generation in general carries.  I don't know if it's because we've seen our friend's parents go from in-love to suddenly in separate homes, or maybe our own parents.  Or maybe it's a dozen other reasons.  But something happened that made us terrified of making a commitment, and finding that love fails.  And we know that we can't control it or prevent it for certain.  We can't determine what someone else will choose in 20 years.  And what if they choose to walk away.  What if they don't even want to, but love just fails. 

I don't really have an answer.  I know I won't let go of love.  But I also know I'll never be able to choose for someone else - and that's for best.  Love requires choice.  It's at the core of why Father created us with a choice- we can choose him.  Or we can choose to walk away. That's what makes love matter I think.  It's what makes trust matter too.  And I suppose, it's beautiful. That day after day, we get to choose.  And we get to be chosen. We get to trust, love, give, receive, and forgive.

But beyond that, I know as a fact that love doesn't fail.  I'm sitting here at work, and suddenly Drew Halcomb's Love Will Bring You Home came on and made me recognize the very fact that I have been assuming love can fail.  How can I?  We can fail at love, but love cannot fail. And it cannot end. 

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

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 ESV)

I love the power of scripture to just sweep away the chaff, clear away lies and confusion and remind us of what is always true.  I want to always believe in love.  And believe that love is for always.  In the depths of my mind, heart, spirit and soul.  I did once, and I will again, for always.  I refuse to believe the mess around me more than the Spirit within me.