Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NLT).

Sometimes I watch National Geographic. Recently I saw a program that compared the amount of land that could be considered “wilderness” in both America and Africa. The statistic was surprising. The percentage of Africa that is wilderness: 28% while the percentage of North America that is wilderness 38%. That certainly didn’t fit my imagination of the “Dark Continent.” In fact, just to add a little more surprise to the wilderness of our country, did you know that California, which is home to one of the most populous cities in the world, is more than 90% wilderness?

Images can be very misleading. The amount of media play a topic gets makes it loom in our minds as more important than items that fly under the public radar screen. Friends in broadcasting tell me that a story is news when it has great impact on a few people, or moderate impact of a great number of people. And the more sensational the impact, the more likely it gets into the news. I don't know about you, but I sure am tired of hearing about violence and illicit sex every day of the year! And I just don't run into those issues in my own life very often. What I experience is the loving support of friends, the daily working out of relationships among families who want things to work, the hard work to put food on the table and a bit of savings in the bank for a rainy day and concern that spiritual time is so hard to get in the hubbub of the everyday bustle of modern life.

In Paul's writings, he encourages Christians to live simple, loving lives. To let the ways of the world go its way and make deliberate choices to live according to the simple rules laid out by Christ. Love God. Love one another. TV is fun. Microwaves are speedy. Cars are consuming. And there are many, many things to distract us from honoring the God who made us, our parent in the greater sense of the word. And there are so many complications when we set about to love one another. Today’s reading speaks of love. It is not simple, but it is essential.

Use it to give you a few guidelines to draw upon when living together gets complicated. Put love’s power into perspective in your life. When love is shared in simple little ways, it gets passed on. My prayer for you is that love will become simpler for you, as natural as breathing, as simple as nurturing touch. Life is not about violence and pain. Look for and practice the good in life and you will be surprised how much more you see and receive.