Love Is

Abiding in Hope

by

Practicing Faith

Iowa Annual Conference | Feb. 13, 2025

On the wall beyond my computer there is a 2’ x 3’ framed poster. The poster is all white with grey words printed on it. The words are written in a large font that can be read across the room. When I sit at my computer like I am now and I pause to think, I see the poster. When I attend a zoom meeting, the poster, and its words, loom over my computer screen. 

love is patient

love is kind

it does not envy

it does not boast

it is not proud

it is not self-seeking

it is not easily angered

it does not keep record of wrong

love does not delight in evil

but rejoices with the truth

it always protects

always trusts

always hopes

always perseveres

love never fails

None of the words are capitalized. There is no punctuation. It is as though love disregards standard expectations of English composition and just flows from one thought to another leaving the reader to sort it out. 

This is a paraphrase of Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. This edition of Abiding is arriving in your email the week of Valentines Day, our annual one-day celebration of romantic love. With all due respect to Hallmark and our local florists, one day is not enough time to explore and celebrate all that love is. Actually, it takes a lifetime and even concentrating on love 24/7 all the days of our lives would not exhaust the topic.

Do you remember your first encounter with love? I don’t. I have no recollection of my mom holding me in her arms. I was an infant, too young to remember the specifics, but I am completely sure that was my first experience of love. I know that because somehow in an only-God-and-grace-could-do-this sort of way, I have always understood that my mom loved me. Her love seeped into me, was renewed by years of baking cookies for me and my brother, doing our laundry, and being present. My dad loved me too, but it is my mom who always felt like my foundation. Where did your sense of love originate? 

The first mention of love in the bible appears in Genesis 22:2. Of course all that God does prior to that, all the goodness poured into creation, is an expression of love. In Genesis 22:2 the word “love” is used for the first time and the complexity of love becomes clear. “He [God] said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.” I’ve never heard (or written) a sermon that completely explains what is happening here. Per this scripture, sometimes love tugs us in two different directions. Maybe more accurately loving one thing or person can slam against the love of another thing or person. Love forces our hearts to enlarge and our minds to engage. 

Fortunately, stories of love in the bible do not stop with this one horrifying moment. Love is mentioned 640 times in scripture and appears in just about every book. Psalms wins the prize, mentioning love 162 times. The last reference to love in scripture is in Revelation 22:15 “Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.” I am not even going to try to explain that. You might want to. Love as referred to in the bible begins and ends with complexity. 

What about church? What does the church say about love? How does love happen in the church? First, we have to acknowledge that not all churches are healthy. How love happens in the church is the indicator of its healthiness. Thanks be to God, we can all sight moments when love expressed as kindness and compassion has overwhelmed us in our churches. A woman appeared at one of my churches openly describing her mental health issues, her struggle with sobriety and her criminal record. A dear saint of the church listened and then responded, “would you sit by me today?” For all the years that followed, that saint cared for that woman in all her ups and downs ever faithful, always loving. 

When I was a new clergy, fresh from seminary and trying to understand what it meant to be a pastor, I went to visit Cindy Finn. Cindy and I had attended the seminary together. We were in our first appointments. I was an associate pastor. Cindy was a solo pastor. I was unsure of myself and my ministry. How do we do this pastor stuff? What does it mean to lead a church? Were we supposed to “fix” our churches, wrangle them into 100% compliance with the Book of Discipline, and make sure that at least on Sunday between 9-10am no one sinned? Was that what it meant to be a pastor? 

Cindy offered incredible clarity. “My job is to love them,” she told me. I don’t know if she remembers that, but I do. The words stuck and I leaned on them often throughout my ministry—in finance meetings, through difficult conversations about the UMC’s LGBTQ position, when an angry parishioner appeared in my office, when I stepped up the pulpit. My job is to love them. 

Love comes to us in a myriad of forms and for several years I tried to discover all the forms of love I could find. Compassion, mercy, forgiveness, justice, trust, peace, assurance, encouragement, and sometimes defiance and resistance and more. I told my church I was looking for facets of love. One rambunctious seven year old told me “And patience. Don’t forget patience.” His mother smiled. It was a form of love they both exercised often.

So I wonder about Paul. At some point he sat down and wrote or at least tried to write what love is. What motivated him? It wasn’t Valentine’s Day. St. Valentine wouldn’t be born for another 200 years. (You might want to read his story. Yet another way to explore the meaning of love.) Paul was not married and wasn’t a big proponent of romantic love. Yet somehow Paul set off with the words “love is…” and out flowed his experience of love. What propelled him? Memories of his mother? All those days on the road travelling and thinking? The warm reception he received in churches? The cold nights in jail? “Love is…” he wrote in present tense. Want to give it a try? What would you say love is?

Love is listening, even when the words are hard to hear. Love pauses, waits for our hardened hearts to open. And then repeats, pausing and waiting again.

Love is accepting the person in front of me, even when I disagree politically. 

Love is looking at my toes and noticing if they are pointed toward the person I am talking to or if my toes are turned away preparing for my escape. 

Love softens my words, demands honesty.

Love is often inconvenient, inefficient, and frustratingly slow in a fast world. 

Love does not require reciprocity. Loving does not require being loved back.  

Love encourages and connects. Love greets with acceptance and often parts with longing. Ever taken a daughter off to college? 

Love goes the distance. Love arrives in texts and emails although these are never as adequate as an embrace. 

Love is the scent of a baby’s head against our cheek and the ache we feel when we see pictures of the destruction in Gaza or read of our racial past. 

Love sustains us when everything else seems to have slipped away. 

Love enters the room and sits by the bedside of the ill and dying and invites us to sit too even when we are afraid and awkward. 

Love finds our human pretentions distracting, our efforts to control everything stifling, and our fixation on money puzzling. 

Love often smiles, sometimes cries, and is always ready. Love sighs, a lot because it is as present as our breath. 

Love rails against labels that that are used to blame and condemn. 

Love looks with gratitude on the goodness of the earth, delights in the change of seasons, is in awe of early morning birdsong and the eternal assurance of the moon in the night sky.

Love chips away at us, discontent with our judgement.

Love abhors division. 

Love says “NO!” to hatred, no to racism, no to abuse. Love can be quite loud about this. 

Love is not a push over. 

Love fills the void and makes us human. 

I cannot improve on Paul. I can only share how love has sustained me in my life. Love is an adventure.

1 John 4 has something to say about love: “God is love.” We’ll leave it there. 

***

Note:

I recommend imitating Paul and writing what love is to you. It felt good to do that, like a prayer. 

Thank you to Cindy Finn. 

Scriptures referred to here come from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition of the bible as it is presented in Biblegateway.com.

The Rev. Cindy Hickman is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. "Abiding in Hope" is a spiritual formation and support series of the conference.