I am both surprised and disappointed at the regularity and rate of change within myself. Why would I even be surprised or disappointed by such things? Largely, I’m guessing, it is because so often I feel so out of control of what is happening…and my ability to understand it seems so limited. Further, I’m guessing I’m only now embracing some things that it means to be human, by acknowledging more ways that I am human…and limited in my ability to control much of life, much less myself.
What brought this to light recently is my awareness of how selfish I am, how much love can escape me when I don’t feel loved. How much I am unable to steel myself in ‘love’ against the failures of my own ability to love well. Of course, it is possible that I don’t really understand much about love at all. And so, my mind recalls some of the summarized descriptors of love in I Corinthians 13. Because of some of the old ways and some of the new ways I have become aware (again) of my failures to love, I’ve decided to try to read and contemplate this passage again each day for 39 days. Why 39? Because it is one less than 40 days…and 40 days seems to be a popular euphemism for making something successful. While I probably do more than I think, I really don’t want to be successful at love…as much as I want to love better, in part by understanding it differently than the regular diet of love definition I absorb from the world.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
