together

Last night Sally and I went to the cinema. We went to watch a film I have wanted to see since I heard it was being made. We went to watch a film that Sally was, at best, ambivalent about. But we went to watch a film. Together…

On the way home, after the film, Sally’s review of the film was, as I expected, less than favourable. She didn’t enjoy it. She didn’t understand some of the character nuances that made me giggle or the fundamentals of the plot that made the film work for me.

And this morning, in the haze between sleeping and waking, I pondered what had happened when Sally came with me to the cinema to watch a film. Together.

Was it tolerance? Did she simply endure the film, accepting that it was something I wanted to see? Yes.

But…

Was it fairness? Were we watching something I wanted to see because we had watched something she wanted to see? Yes.

And…

Beneath those aspects of what happened last night, underpinning and holding together differing views, preferences and even personalities, was love. Sally came with me to do something I would enjoy because she loves me. Just as I do the same for her.

Loving someone doesn’t mean you have to agree with them on everything. It doesn’t mean that you have to like what they like. It doesn’t mean you have to see things the way they see them. It means that those differences are less important than the person is, and your commitment to them accepts and even celebrates those differences because it’s part of what makes them them and you you. Love is the greatest.

This isn’t only true of marriages and romantic relationships. 1 Corinthians 13, the passage that’s often read out at marriages because it’s so beautiful, is actually about a church…

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

“⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

“⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

“¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (NIVUK)

Love is much greater than tolerance or fairness – it is what makes relationships. All relationships.

Be blessed, be a blessing