{Love}[3rd April 1991]

[Redbook9:38][19910403:1049]{Love}[3rd April 1991]

19910403.1049

‘Set me like a seal on your heart,

like a seal on your arm.

*For Love is as strong as Death

passion as relentless as Sheol.***

The flash of it is a flash of fire,**

a flame of Yahweh himself.

Love no flood can quench,

no torrents drown.

Were a man to offer all his family wealth to buy love,

Contempt is all that he would gain.’****

#

*

		*R~r~ (eg TXIII)
	/
(G~g~)
	\
		**J~j~

**

***[The abode of the dead in the Hebrew Bible / Christian Old Testament]

****(cf 1 Co[rinthians] 13)#*

# – S[on]g [of Songs] 8: 6-7 [New Jerusalem Bible]

#*

[

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long, and is kind; love envies not; love vaunts not itself, is not puffed up,

Does not behave itself unseemly, seeks not her own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil;

Rejoices not in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;

Bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.

[Authorised version / King James Bible, with “love” substituted for “charity”, and archaic word forms updated.]

]

[

‘Make me a willow cabin at your gate,

And call upon my soul within the house;

Write loyal cantons of contemned love

And sing them loud even in the dead of night;

Halloo your name to the reverberate hills

And make the babbling gossip of the air

Cry out 'Olivia!' O, You should not rest

Between the elements of air and earth,

But you should pity me!’

– William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 5.

]

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