Abstract Thursday - ‘Lines’

I found comfort at church today. My faith gives me hope and courage, and the reassurance that, no matter what, I am loved. Mum used to say, “I don’t know how people cope without faith - it’s something to hold onto, a core running through your life keeping you steady through good times and bad”. And during the last conversation I had about faith with Dad, he spoke of the importance of love first and foremost, referring to the lines of St Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians which form chapter 13: -

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

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

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. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 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. 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.

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

Thanks to Ingeborg for looking after the Abstract Thursday challenge, with this week’s optional theme of ‘Lines’. Here is part of Mum’s chest of drawers, one of a few pieces of my parents’ furniture which I have kept.