Love is Not

When 67-year-old carpenter Russell Herman died in 1994, his will included a staggering set of bequests. Included in his plan for distribution was more than two billion dollars for the City of East St. Louis, another billion and a half for the State of Illinois, two and a half billion for the national forest system, and to top off the list, Herman left six trillion dollars to the government to help pay off the national debt. That sounds amazingly generous, but there was a small problem—Herman’s only asset when he died was a 1983 Oldsmobile.  

  As Paul continues in the Biblical description of love, he points out that we can’t give to others what we don’t have, and one of the greatest thieves of love is our own pride. I Corinthians 13’s list of things love “is not’” challenges all of us to take a good look inside and ask if there is room for love in me.