I CORINTHIANS 13
Sandy's Paraphrase
September 1984
If I could speak languages of earthlings and E.T., but not in a loving way, I'd only be a noisy Ms. Pac-Man or a loud oven timer. If I could tell the future and read minds and know it all, and if my faith could make cockroaches disappear but I have no love, I'd be a big zero. If I stood in the Public Square and gave away all my butterflies and books and photo albums to the street people and bag ladies and if I set myself on fire with someone's cigarette lighter just to prove a point but I didn't love, it wouldn't benefit me a stitch. Love waits indefinitely and in a calm, soft voice and doesn't turn green with envy. It never spews self-praise or gets a swelled head. It doesn't act like a jerk or demand its own way. It doesn't cheer when someone does a no-no but is always delighted when someone gets it right. It can handle whatever is dished out; it keeps faith, baby; it never feels hopeless and it carries us through in spite of Murphy's Law. Love never cops out. Fortunetellers will be palmed off; back masking will be unmasked and PhD.'s will be piled higher and deeper because we don't know the half of it and we can't tell a tenth of it. But when the whole thing comes together, the phony magic will disappear. When I was a kid, I chattered like a kid, I thought kid thoughts and I had kid logic. When I became a grown-up person, I left the kid stuff behind. For now our looking glass is like Alice's but later it will be a two way mirror. Then we'll see eye to eye. Now what I know is like jigsaw pieces but then I'll find the box with the picture on it which God had all along. So this trio - faith, hope and love - lives on. But the awesome-to-the-max one is love.
Happy birthday, Sandy Krieger
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