I recieved many requests to make this blog into a typographic poster. I didn’t have time to give it some real artistic flair, but if you’re interested, these are free to download. Just click on them and the pdf will open print-ready.
If you print them, they are sized at 24/36″ and I would recommend getting them printed on 100# text weight or 80# cover weight paper (your printer will know what that means). These are free, please don’t alter or sell them in any way. Spread the love!
Love is patient: it waits, it stills, it quiets before speaking.
With patience a ruler may be persuaded,
and a soft tongue will break a bone.
Proverbs 25:15
Love is kind: it coats its words in gentleness, extending the hand of graciousness to every person, deservedly or not.
Gracious words are like a honeycomb,
sweetness to the soul and health to the body.
Proverbs 16:24
Love does not envy: it finds contentment in today, rejoices with others who have what it wants for itself.
But godliness with contentment is great gain.
I Timothy 6:6
Love does not boast: it brings nothing but the cross, it is built of humility and the knowledge that it is only a steward.
As it is written,
“Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
I Corinthians 1:31
Love is not arrogant: it assumes the best of everyone, deserved or not, never stops learning & is patient while others learn too.
I say to everyone among you not to think of himself
more highly than he ought to think.
Romans 12:3
Love is not rude: love holds its tongue when there is an opportunity to best or beat another with words.
When words are many, transgression is not lacking,
but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.
Proverbs 10:19
Love doesn’t insist on its own way: it shows the best way is the way to the cross through the cross.
Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me.”
John 14:6
Love is not irritable: it doesn’t get annoyed, pissed, frustrated, or angry. It is not “owed” anything.
Be not quick in your spirit to become angry,
for anger lodges in the heart of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:9
Love is not resentful: it keeps no record of wrongs, when disappointed by someone, it forgives quickly, generously.
If one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.
Colossians 3:13
Love does not rejoice at wrongdoing: it weeps at the sight of brokenness, dissension, disunity, and gossip.
You shall not go around as a slanderer among your people,
and you shall not stand up against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.
Leviticus 19:16
Love rejoices with the truth: it drops everything and sells everything to find truth instead of relying on what meets the eye.
The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls,
who, on finding one pearl of great value,
went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Matthew 13:45-46
Love bears all things: it upholds the weight others can’t hold, defending the defenseless and turning the other cheek.
But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also.
Matthew 5:39
Love believes all things: it errs on the side of trust, not in man, but in God.
And those who know your name put their trust in you.
Psalm 9:10
Love hopes all things: it never stops hoping for the resolution and reconciliation of all things under heaven.
All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself
and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
II Corinthians 5:18
Love endures all things: it holds up for the sake of the gospel, enduring persecution, gossip, slander, & injustice.
May the God of endurance and encouragement
grant you to live in such harmony with one another,
in accord with Christ Jesus.
Romans 15:5
Love never ends: it wakes up every day determined to do it all over again.
Let me hear in the morning of your steadfast love,
for in you I trust. Make me know the way I should go,
for to you I lift up my soul.
Psalm 143:8
This is a series of tweets I wrote today based from I Corinthians 13. Mostly I was preaching to myself, but thought they might encourage some others.
I’ve got layers of lies
that I don’t even know about yet.
Sara Groves
Here’s what happened:
A friend told me something and I believed her. I do that. I’m a believing, trusting sort of person. The thing is, what she told me was only half true. Not half true to her—she told me the truth as best as she could, but it was only half of the whole truth. I didn’t know the other parties involved, so what could I do? I believed her. This is what friends do.
But the water has sunk to the bottom and the oil has risen to the top and with it all the floating particles that are still coated with enough water that I can’t look into that cup without seeing more of the whole story.
And my heart is sick.
Because her true-to-her story was only half of the story and now I know the other half, and the other half is my friend too, and when you love oil and water, even if they hate each other, what can you do? You believe them both with as much grace as you can muster. This is what good friends do.
But at some point the whole thing gets shaken up again and it takes a while for things to settle and while it’s still shaken you feel sicker and sicker still because there are always three sides to every story, hers, his, and the horrible, awful, honest truth. With a choice so divided, what can you do? You choose truth. This is what the truest friend does.
To choose truth, though, means to lose other things, namely trust.
Today trust was lost and I mourn that. I mourn it so hard and so deeply because I have been lied to, though neither of them did the lying.
I was the one lying all along. And that is the most heartbreaking of it all.
Paul admonishes the Thessalonians to “aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you.”
I’m stuck on that today because I didn’t live quietly and I listened to the lies. But the lies were of my own making and they said something like this: You are big enough to handle the heartbreaking details of someone’s life all by yourself. You are big enough to have an opinion on lives that aren’t your own. You are big enough to discern truth from lies and from opinions and cries.
The truth is that I am not a part of the problem or the solution here; I am only a particle that floated to the top of his story, coated in the residue of her story. Just one small particle.
And if God did not give me the grace to handle this (at least without some amount of bellyaching), then it is probably best for me to simply bow out.
Did I ever tell you about the time I listened to the same ten songs on repeat for 17 hours?
You either have to be crazy to do this or completely indifferent, and I might have been both at the same time.
Here’s what I know though: it takes 17 hours to get over a broken heart if the soundtrack is right.
The drive was a familiar one, I’d done it countless times during my years living in Tennessee. I would say I could do it in my sleep, but in fact I probably did do it near sleep sometimes.
I had it timed to perfection, stopping at all the same gas stations, breathing more easily when I crossed under Halfway Blvd (because it meant it was my halfway point too), knowing how many cups of coffee it took (four grande Starbucks espresso-blend) and at which point I would feel nearest to tears of exhaustion there and back.
This drive and I, we were tight. After the second time I did it, I began to look forward to it. It meant 17 hours of uninterrupted quiet. 17 hours alone. 17 hours of audio books or not. It meant 17 hours to reflect over the past few weeks and the few weeks to come. I began to treasure the drive.
But never was it as healing as it was that trip in January. I left the cold north, crossing borders and mountains, passing giant roadside crosses that signify Bible-Belt territory, back down south where my heart felt its brokenness more tenderly. Back to where everything reminded me that something hadn’t worked. Back to where I felt the sting of failure more than I’d ever felt it before. How little I knew about failure at 25 though. (How little I still know.)
I put that cd in and one after another those 10 tracks worked out the kinks in my heart. They massaged the knots and tightened loose screws, they identified fears and roots of fears, they told me to pick up my head, that the end of something good didn’t mean the end of everything good.
It was the first time that I took Exit 25 off I75 south that there weren’t tears of angst and exhaustion, but tears of healing and finishing.
17 hours is what it takes to heal my broken heart if the soundtrack is right.
It is hard to explain to someone in English how to make coffee if they only speak Portuguese. I suppose the irony of that is that the Portuguese probably know how to make their coffee blacker, bolder, and better than we ever will. But you understand the point. We, all of us, go through life trying desperately to help speakers of other languages understand what we are so certain of in our own. It is a climb that weakens even the most resolved.
I speak in the language of touch and I hear best when words, any words, are accompanied by a hand on my shoulder, arm against arm, or heads close together. I do not know why this is the language I speak best and I understand less why this is the language I receive best. It is not the language of the suburbs and I feel that acutely here. I take my hugs whenever I can. I give them because I want you to know that I love you, but I also want to feel that you could love me too.
Cards, gifts, time spent talking or a surprise task finished, these bless me, but I quickly forget. Like all the times I’ve tried to learn Spanish. Whole semesters of conjugations and tutors and rote memorization and my grasp is still medial, at best. It is not my language and it does not come naturally to me. It does not even come unnaturally to me. It dances circles around me, taunting me with the secrecy of its word-speak.
A hand on the top of my head, a thumb rubbed into my weary shoulders, feet touching beneath the table, and my ache for love subsides. This may seem hyperbolic to you, and perhaps it is, but we are speaking different languages, that’s all.
I want to love well. I do. But I also want to be loved well.
There is a part of me that would like to believe that the creator of the universe, the one who designed love and is love, that he would be beyond the need for our earth-encrusted affection and dirt-laden offerings, but it was he who pled before his father “Take this cup from me” and then found his brothers asleep on their watch. “Could you not wait with me? Keep with me?”
I wonder if that perfect Christ, the sinless man, the creator in flesh, if he felt in that moment of abandonment, his utter humanness.
I wonder if it is in our need for love that we are most human. Here, with our knotted muscles, tired from the work of life, we know our need.
