Focus: These Three

Text: 1Cor.13:23

"So, faith, hope, love abide, THESE THREE…"

Life is designed to function in association, not in isolation. We can't afford to isolate things that are meant to function together or mix things that are meant to stay separate. Either way we ruin things. We have a biblical injunction against putting asunder what God has joined together.

Also, while certain things are built to last, other things fizzle out. I call them the lasting and the passing. While Jesus Christ talked about "true riches," Paul warns us about trusting in "uncertain riches." So there are durable and non-durable riches.

The Apostle Paul tells us that faith, hope and love will remain even when other things of life are gone or lost, and it is in our interest to cling to the lasting and avoid relying on the passing or fleeting.

Faith, hope and love belong together and they last forever. They remain an integral part of life. They are life's bedrock. With them we sail, and without them we sink.

This trilogy of virtue will keep you going even in tough or hard times. A man is really poor without them even if he possesses all the wealth in the world. Billy Sunday said, "The fellow that has no money is poor. The fellow that has nothing but money is poorer still." So, if you go through your large possessions, and you can't find the assets of faith, hope and love, then you are truly poor.

Faith takes care of your past. Hope takes care of your future; and love makes your present meaningful.

You can comfortably rest on the weight of faith, hope and love. Faith gives you something to live for. Hope gives you something to look forward to, and love makes life worth living. Faith brings God into the affairs of this life. Hope helps us see the future God has planned and perfected, and love puts God on display all the time. Faith is vertical vision - looking upward. Hope is eschatological dream - looking forward; and love is horizontal sight - looking outward. Faith is heaven with its roots on earth. Hope is heaven planted in the distance. And love is heaven sown in the human heart.

In their order: faith is great; hope is greater; and love is greatest. Faith, hope and love harmonize your life and make it flourish. And with the manure or fertilizer of God's word they are constantly nourished.

Embrace and treasure them. No one is spiritually or eternally rich without them. We soar by faith, sail by hope, and sing by love. Faith is root, hope is branch - growing out of the tree of faith, and love is fruit. "These three…"

by Bishop Moses E. Peter