We
believe as God is Love…
If we speak in the
tongues of men or of angels but have not God, we are a sounding gong or a
clanging cymbal. If we have the gift of prophecy and the knowledge of every
hidden truth; we may have faith enough to move mountains; but if we have not
God, we are nothing. We may give all we possess to the needy; we may give
our bodies to be burnt, but if we have not God, we gain nothing by it.
God is patient and
kind, God envies no one, is never boastful, never conceited, never rude; God
is never selfish, never quick to take offense. God keeps no score of wrongs,
takes no pleasure in the sins of others, but delights in the truth. There is
nothing God cannot face; there is no limit to God’s faith, God’s hope, God’s
endurance.
God will never come to
an end. Prophecies will cease; tongues of ecstasy will fall silent;
knowledge will vanish. For our knowledge and our prophecy alike are partial,
and the partial vanishes when wholeness comes. When we were children, we
spoke as children, thought like children, reasoned like children; but when
we grew up we finished with childish things. At present we see on puzzling
reflections in a mirror, but one day we shall see face to face. Our
knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of us.
These are three things that last forever; faith, hope, and God; and the
greatest of the three is God.
(I Corinthians 13
– [Revised English Bible] paraphrased)
Our church was dedicated to this passage when it was originally founded
as the Corinthian Society in 1846, ten years after the fall of the
Alamo. |
