“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Cor 13:8-13)
One thing I believe in is the power of God’s Word to penetrate our hearts and sustain us at all times. We meditate on it, listen to it in song, let its truths find a place in our hearts and then we reap the fruit of the work it achieves in our lives. That work is often to strengthen us and sustain us for the trials of life.
Quite often, I wake up with a Scripture or a song running through my head. I’ve not necessarily consciously been thinking of this when I go to sleep, but somehow it works its way to the forefront of my mind when I awake. The song below is based on the passage in 1 Corinthians 13 quoted above. One thing remains. God’s love will never run out on us (I love the double meaning in that phrase in English – it will never run out in the sense of being exhausted or empty, but also it will never run out on us in the sense of deserting us, as human love can do.) I also love the way the songwriter uses repetitive elements of melody to convey the sense of the endlessness of God’s love (‘on and on and on and on it goes’). That can create an impression of something that is boring, but in actual fact, there is nothing boring about the constancy of God’s love!
“Your love never fails
It never gives up
It never runs out on me
(x3)
Your love
Higher than the mountains
That I face
Stronger than the power
Of the grave
And it’s constant in the trial and the change
This one thing remains
One thing remains
Because on and on and
On and on it goes
It overwhelms
And satisfies my soul
And I never, ever,
Have to be afraid
One thing remains
One thing remains
In death, in life
I’m confident and covered
By the power of Your great love
My debt is paid
There’s nothing that can separate
My heart from Your great love.” (Kristian Stanfill, ‘One Thing Remains’)
‘One Thing Remains’, Kristian Stanfill