A Thought on Puke Day

In honor of today being Puke Day (an old college moniker that has always seemed appropriate; for a more inspiring history, click here), I thought I'd share a little meditative exercise to bring some perspective to our modern-day understanding of love.

If you've ever been to a wedding, you've heard 1 Corinthians 13 read ad nauseum. While a most beautiful and beloved passage in the Bible, our familiarity with it unfortunately often robs its depth of meaning and blinds us to just how difficult love (at least biblically defined) can be.

With this in mind, try reading the passage below, inserting your name in the place of "love" (I've added blanks to make it easy) and see how far you get:

4 _______ is patient and kind; _______ does not envy or boast; _______ is not arrogant 5 or rude. _______ does not insist on _______ 's own way; _______ is not irritable or resentful; 6 _______ does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 _______ bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 _______ never ends.

Sadly, I don't make it past the first line. Indeed, love is a many splendored thing, but I wouldn't know the first thing about it apart from the person of Christ.

Happy Puke Day.

(Note: Lest anyone be overly concerned for the feminine majority in our house and their enjoyment of all things Valentine's, here's how we usually celebrate the day.)