(I wrote this last year at a very mentally and spiritually confusing time. Just remembered it now and decided to post it. Hope it blesses at least one confused and hungry soul.)

1 Corinthians 13 

1 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If 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. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

8 Love 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.9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When 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. 12 For 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.

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

In this chapter, Paul talks about how without love, nothing we do or know amounts to anything. I have been wrestling with endless questions and doubts about “who am I” and “what does it mean to exist” or “to be” because I find myself identifying myself as “Me” in this body that moves and thinks and talks and has emotion but I realize I don’t actually know what it means to be “me”. It makes it terrifying to just exist, and also makes everything feel so meaningless. It makes me dread living another day. I guess people express this curiosity and question without consciously thinking about it as I am doing – we “soul search”, we try to find meaning in relationships and experiences, we try to identify ourselves with a certain culture or religion or philosophy. I have been wondering if there is some deeper “knowledge” or “mystery” to discover that can adequately address all these questions, beyond or outside of God. To some extent, asking too many questions makes everything futile and meaningless because you lose a sense of objective and unchanging truth by which everything else must be defined and have meaning isn’t IF you take away God. And one question then I had is how do we know who God is and if he really exists, and then we get back to the same question of what does it mean to exist and then the whole paradigm crumbles and then it becomes useless to ask questions because questions themselves become useless. It’s a dead end, a black hole; all these questions. (I believe are from hell.) There comes a point when one just has to believe or admit rather that we just know that we know because God has made us and put it in us to know that he is. How else do we know that our mom is our mom or we are who we are at least relationally/positionally as someone’s daughter or someone spouse or someone’s mother? They are not social constructs, they are truths. We know that we are of a certain gender or ethnicity and it becomes tedious and useless and crazy eventually to question those identities/truths. We just know that we know the meaning of words and that these words have meaning – we cannot endlessly define, we must begin at some unequivocal assumption (which itself must be Truth). Either God is beyond these questions or these questions are beyond God but it cannot be both. If these questions are beyond God then everything breaks down and nothing makes sense. But look, we are making sense of that statement right now – the very fact that we categorize or understand that existence is meaningless is itself a statement that has meaning, assumes meaning exists. We have a knowing that is beyond question which means God must be beyond the questions and he has put it in us to just know that we know Truth even when we can’t know it or explain it completely. We don’t need to endlesssly dissect and asks there comes a point we just must admit we know and that is faith. “By faith we understand that the universe was created at Gods command..”. We just understand it by faith. And so that’s where we shall begin: God is. We just know that we know. And now it makes sense to believe the whole bible and we do understand it (in part). Praise the living God! 

It is interesting that in this passage Paul talks about useless knowledge – that is knowledge without love, and then at the end he talks about knowledge in the context of a relationship – knowing as we are fully known. Why does he connect this to love, the essence of love and the fact that love never fails? What is love and why can’t it fail? He talks about love as if it is a person. It is because God is love. He is talking about God. Love cannot fail because God cannot fail. He is all in all, the only thing independent of all other things and in whom all other things find their meaning and purpose and everything else. In other words, if we have not GOD, we are nothing. The essence of being loved by God is being known by him, completely. Right now, we cannot know him as he knows us – we cannot know even how much he knows us. We see as a shadow, a reflection but even that is sufficient to make us know that he is worth it, he is the only real thing. But when Christ comes or we reach his kingdom, which is what we are journeying towards, living towards, pilgriming towards, then we shall know completely – meaning we shall love him completely as he has loved us. It will be perfect love, perfect union, perfect oneness. There will be no fear of any kind there because perfect love drives out all fear. Fear is of death so there will be death or anything that comes with death – sorrow, pain, grief, mourning, shame. I can’t comprehend it now. But I can take rest in the fact that I am fully known and so fully loved and this love cannot fail me. And I just know that I know that I know this Love even though I can’t answer every single question my mind throws at me (or the evil one). I can put those questions and simply live in this mind and body that God has given me knowing that I know that it is not I who live but Christ in me and that he has come to give me life to the full. He himself is my life. I need not fear because he is already one with me. I need only to surrender to his lordship and trust him for he cannot fail. I can live fully on my position as a wife, a mom, a friend, and more than that a child of God, a follower of Jesus, and an ambassador for his kingdom. I can say confidently to every word of God “Amen” even when I can’t comprehend or “feel” it is true for it is truer than my knowing and comprehension and I willingly submit to it. I can finally surrender my life and soul and every fibre or my being to Him knowing that though I may be failing, or I am failing, he cannot fail and he is holding me now, sustaining me by the power of his word. I cannot understand, Lord, but I simply say “amen” and trust you. I am who you say I am. I am loved and known completely and I look forward and pursue the day I may know you as I am fully known by you. Amen.