Covering love...

"Above all, keep your love for one another at full strength, since love covers a multitude of sins."

1 Peter 4:8

Perhaps the most important thing I can say about love as a fruit of the Spirit, aside from explaining how God loves us, is that we should always endeavor to keep it going. Nothing should ever stand in the way of it. Nothing should ever be able to surmount it. Nothing should ever have any chance to stand against it.

And as my iPod shuffles over to the David Crowder Band and their song "How He Loves," I am reminded of how important it is that we attempt, in our best fashion, to model God's love. Can we actually imitate God in this completely? No. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try with ever fiber of our being!

Also, we need to keep focus on the truth that love does cover a multitude of sins and offenses. How many times has someone said, "I know (that person) is that way... but I love (him/her) anyway," to you? People say it all the time. We overlook all the things our children and friends do that would be offensive to others, because of love. We overlook things that our parnters in Bible study may say or do that would offend others, because of love. We certainly are adept at overlooking the things that we, individually, say and do that could be absolutely offensive to others, and that is due to the extreme love of self that we all use to justify our fleshly moments. So why can we not overlook those things that we find offensive?

Showing God's love, as stated many times before, is difficult. But perhaps as we come near to the end of this portion of the study, our first place should be to remove the feelings from our sleeves and begin to actively seek opportunities to overlook offenses and show true loving character to all we encounter. We all know who out there bothers each of us, and we all know what sets us off into a mood of negativity. So let's try it out and see if we can be more Christ-like and just see past it, as Peter says.

God bless you all!!!