The Love That Never Quits

(from 1 Corinthians 13)

A lamp is burning in a window tonight.
Someone set it there
and will not go to bed
until the one she loves comes home.

That lamp is what the word means.
Love.
The kind that stays.
The kind you can walk back to
at any hour.

Here is what it looks like
when it moves around a room.

Love waits.
When you are slow,
it does not sigh.
When you are small,
it does not rush you.
It has all the time in the world,
and it spends that time on you.

Love is kind.
It speaks soft when you are sorry.
It does not poke the bruise.

Love does not need to be first.
It does not push to the front of the line.
It does not grab the biggest chair.
It is glad to go last.
Glad to kneel down.
Glad to wash the dust
off tired, dusty feet.

Love is slow to get angry.
Love keeps no score.
When you get it wrong,
love does not write it down
to read back to you later.
Love lets it go. On purpose.

Love does not smile when things go bad.
Love smiles at what is true.

Love covers.
Love trusts.
Love hopes.
Love holds on tight
when everything in you
wants to let go.

Love never gives up.

Never, little one.
Not when you are afraid.
Not when you are ashamed.
Not when you have run so far away
you are sure you can't be found.

Love comes looking.

The whole world goes searching
for a love this patient,
a love this kind,
a love that keeps no list
and never, ever quits.

Where could you ever find a love like that?

You have been looking at him
this whole time.

Every single line you just heard
is a picture of Jesus.
He is the patient one.
He is the kind one.
He is the one who knelt and washed the feet,
and took the last place,
and would not keep the list.

He is the love that came looking.
All the way down.
All the way to a cross.
And he would not let you go.

The day you forget your own name,
he will still know it.
He loves you
as if there were only one of you to love,
and he loves every child he is gathering home
exactly that much.
Not one will be left behind.

So when you feel that wish inside
for a love that would never, ever leave,
that wish is a window
with his lamp in it.
He has already begun to love you like that,
and love like his
walks straight into the dark places,
even the last dark place of all,
and comes back out
still holding your hand.