Devotions for February 4, 2016

Thursday: “Love keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Corinthians 13:5).

            I love fresh sheets. (Ooh! See how I used ‘love’ carelessly there?) I don’t know what it is about them, but I adore fresh linens stretched tight over the mattress. It’s one of the best feelings I know.

            A fresh start feels like that. Forgiveness feels like that. Having no record of wrongs feels like that. It feels like things are new.

            I don’t know if you’ve ever been truly forgiven or truly given forgiveness—I mean, one of those cases where a relationship was just destroyed and there was real repentance and deep reconciliation… It’s amazing.

            And it’s in your hand to grant that kind of feeling of joy and release and newness. All it takes is erasing a record of wrongs. No, more than that—tearing the whole page out of the book. When love keeps no record of wrongs, it destroys the whole book.

            Paul doesn’t say it in 1 Corinthians 13, but that’s what our God did for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus. And it’s what we’re called to do for others as those who love in His image.