Whoever said 13 is an unlucky number must have never read the book of 1 Corinthians… Chapter 13, verse 13 says:
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Faith is first, because without faith in God, nothing else is going to work. We exercise faith in little ways every day, often without even thinking about it. When you went to sleep last night, you probably didn’t spend a lot of time wondering if you were going to wake up this morning; although it could happen. You exercised faith that allowed you peace in closing your eyes because, even though had you considered it you would realize there was the possibility that you may not wake up, the likelihood for most of us is that 'asleep' is followed by 'awake'. This is simple faith. Faith in God is faith in His Goodness and Love, which provides us with knowledge that should ‘awake’ never come, we are still covered. And while faith is incredibly important – indeed, a crucial step that must be taken, it is not the greatest. But faith does lead us to the next step in our journey.
Next is Hope – through our faith, we come to have a hope for a better world, and a better us. Hope that the promises of God that have proven trustworthy are something we can grab hold of and live our lives through - in both recognition and continual gratefulness. Hope is a wonderful thing, and I refuse to believe in a world with no hope. Anyone that doesn’t believe there is a God, and has bought into the lie that we are just some wild, cosmic accident, cannot live a life filled with hope of what is to come. If this is all there is, then we are truly wretched beings. But thanks to God and His beautiful plan fulfilled by Jesus Christ, we have hope! And as amazing and life-changing as hope is, it is not the greatest. Hope leads us on to the summit!
Love. True love is seen through the life and works of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the ultimate litmus test of love – without Him and what He has done, we would have only our own worldly view of love, which is self-serving and often misleading. Our Lord was in perfect harmony and glorious surroundings, and chose to leave that and come down to a stinking and ungrateful world, where He would suffer many things, before finally being killed in a most brutal and shame-filled way. This was done out of a kind of Love that we cannot fathom. However, while we cannot grasp just how great this Love is, we can get a sense of it running through our veins; stirring our hearts; reaching into our minds and making us fall down in pure awe and wonder that such a Love can exist. More than that, this Love exists and was displayed to the world for me – for you. This is Love, and this is the greatest thing of all!
So remember lucky 13!
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13)