Love Always Hopes

If I speak in the tongues Or languages of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹²For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13, NIV

Dear Christian,

As a parent, I hope for so many things for my girls:

• I hope they group up to be strong independent women. 
• I hope they make friends. The good kind, that stay with you through everything.
• I hope they find a career that fulfills them rather than drains them.
• I hope they find a partner who loves them and cares for them as much as I do.
• I hope they live a long and happy life.
• I hope they find purpose and peace. 
• I hope the world is kind to them.

The list goes on.

1 Timothy 1:1 refers to Jesus as ‘our hope’. So it only makes sense that love also includes hope. The hope within us is Christ Himself. If He lives within us, His hope will be seen in how we treat others. _[1]

“‘When we take people,’ thou wouldst say, ‘merely as they are, we make them worse; when we treat them as if they were what they should be, we improve them as far as they can be improved.’”  – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Isn’t that what hope is? Wishing for the best possible outcome rather than something average or mundane? 

What do you hope for?

Hopefully,
Ashley

[1] “What does it mean that love always hopes” GotQuestions.org. https://www.gotquestions.org/love-always-hopes.html.