My head is spinning

My last post here was a New Year’s post. In the post I said, “I suspect that there are some unexpected crises and pain in store for some of us.” I had no idea it would come so quick and in the measure it has in only a few weeks. In these past few weeks, a good friend lost her son to cancer. He was just a little older than my oldest son. The pastor of the church that I grew up in . . . who baptized me and ministered to our family, past away. Friends and colleagues at the place where I work have lost loved ones unexpectedly and after long battles of illness. Now, Kobe Bryant and his daughter are taken from this world in an instant leaving the rest of the family in shock and grief. These painful reminders of the brevity of life evoke in me the thought of priorities and my mind goes to the Apostle Paul’s first letter to Christians in Corinth. Synthesizing his message in the thirteenth chapter, the priority is to demonstrate love:

“1Cor. 13:4   Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.