Love is...

1 Corinthians 13:4-8 

“Love does not envy…”  God is not envious.

He is not filled constantly with a craving to possess our personalities to fulfill His own personal lusts.  He does not long to own our bodies and our material belongings for the purpose of building an egocentric kingdom or government.  Rather He gives of His personality, body and possessions to see us built up and edified.  The cry of His heart is that through such sacrificial giving, we would be motivated to sacrifice and give and thereby build a kingdom for His person.  Through giving and receiving, without thought for self-gain or reward, we become as He is and experience the freedom of communal oneness where He and I and all of us are shared.  Therefore, we could not envy.  This is not a religion of “use”, but a relational community of love.  When we feel that we are “used”, we must take to gain back what we have lost.  Until we are able to take, we will envy what others, or even God, has that we feel we are deprived of.  But, personally, if we know that God gives, even at a loss to Himself, we are motivated to give.  He always fills the righteous, His own children, with the good things we need.  Though we may experience a small loss in the meantime, we wait patiently for His goodness.