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Perish the thought, I am not in love. Not at least, by any modern definition. Love is NOT seeing him/her and feeling your heart beat twice as fast. Exercise does that, and for that matter so does eating chocolate. I don't mean to ignore the emotional aspect of love, that is practically impossible. I am simply deprecating the modern concept of emotion being all there is to love. It has led to far too many broken marriages and broken homes for there to be any truth is such an idea. So then, what is love?

1st Corinthians 13:4-7
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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.

Famous verses, but all too often forgotten; too often broken, even amongst the body of Christ. Love of this kind is exceedingly uncommon, within the church and without. I am disappointed that this should be true in case of the former. I am aware that there are certain...unresolved issues amongst the committee members. That this should impair the function of a committee supposedly dedicated to body of Christ is a sad state of affairs indeed. The embodiment of perfect love was Christ. Should not his body be striving towards the same? Saddened am I with what I perceive to be a lack of this love in our committee. I am perfectly convinced that if this were not the case, there would be nothing missing, or amiss in the committee. For lack of patience, hurtful words were said that should never have been said. For lack of love, grudges are even now held where no record should have been kept. Even if you are unable to be reconciled to somebody else in the committee, leave all the baggage outside the door. Don't weigh down everybody else with your personal disputes. Inevitably however, the baggage creeps back in, however hard you try to slam the door, which is why your disputes need to be resolved, if possible, between the two of you rather than in front of a crowd of spectators.

Here you accuse me of a lack of information. True, I don't know how much she/he hurt you, or who's right and who's wrong. Neither should I presume to be made judge or jury over such a matter, the reason being, between friends there is no need of justice. Now, that can't be right you say...and in certain situations, indubitably so. But friends give and take and this act necessarily entails creating an..imbalance, for want of a better word. Now, this idea of give and take is a form of love wouldn't you say? That's what I meant when I said that there is no need of justice between friends, for justice is all about equality, and love, while obviously not diametrically opposed to justice, sometimes overrules the need for the former. It wasn't fair or just on my brother for me to want my cake and and his, but he knew I was young, and at that age a little inclined to be selfish, and so out of love, I believe, he let me have both. This wasn't a one-time event, as an older brother he was continually giving, and I taking, which to my dismay I realized later on, and have tried to repay him a little, or 'even the score' a bit, I should say(still working on it actually). But the point is this: that when the circumstances (a certain maturity on his part and a lack on mine) demanded it, he gave when I wanted to take. What enabled him to do it? Why, love of course. He was being 'not self-seeking, not easily angered, and always persevering'. He never, save once, (that one I really had it coming...heh) gave me thrashing I pretty damn well often deserved.

Consider this: even atoms know how to give and take! Sodium particles donate one electron to chloride particles...and...voila! Sodium Chloride, a.k.a table salt. The thing about donating electrons, or should we say giving and taking, though, is that when this happens we get an ionic bond. The particles stick together, and its a strong bond, with a high melting/boiling point, as we learnt in Form 4 chemistry. To put it another way, when particles give and take, they grow closer to one another and are not easily broken apart. Notice a little parallelism here? God is great indeed! He gives moral lessons through the fundamental principles and laws that hold the world together.

And so what I think our committee needs is love. Love enough to put aside all differences, to leave out the right and wrong and just be reconciled for the sake of Christ's body, the church. Love enough to give and take, and bond to truly become one body, separate members still, but one body nevertheless.