Faith, Hope, and Love

1 Corinthians 13:13 And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest is love.

I was in church this morning, and I felt like God wanted me to write this blog to one of my best friends and his family. I, of course, immediately made excuses why I shouldn’t write a blog to them. You see, my friend’s mother, Alice, just passed away, and his father also passed away very recently. It takes a lot of tact to write and to speak about biblical matters at a time of mourning. And to be quite honest, without God’s help, I am not up to the job.

The Bible says that there is a time for everything under the sun. There is a time for mourning, and now is definitely the time. My friend and his family are going to miss their parents. They are going to grieve, and there are no magic words that will fix that. But even in death and especially in death, three things remain: faith, hope, and love.

We have faith. We have faith in the promises that God made through Jesus. We have faith that whoever believes in Him will have everlasting life. We have faith that Alice has a new body, one that will never get old-no more sickness and no more pain.

We have hope. We have hope in that fact that the next time we see Alice, she will be in her prime. She will be complete and perfect.

But most of all, we have love. On Friday night, Alice’s visitation was held. As expected, there was mourning, but there was also an overwhelming sense of love for Alice and the family. And it’s certainly fitting for my friend because he loves people. He is probably one of the first people I ever knew who set the example of how to love people. He is inviting, generous, and non-judging. It was really cool to see that kind of love being reciprocated on Friday night.

To my friend: we are incredibly sorry for your loss, and we are here for you. But most importantly, we love you.