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Showing posts from July, 2010

Surprised by His Love

In a Sunday Bible study session at a small Church in Piazza, the center of Addis Ababa, an Ethiopian Bible teacher,  Menelik Asfaw,   was vehemently expounding the preeminence of Love. It has been quite a while, about fifteen years ago, but I still remember his teachings quite vividly. He taught from the 13th chapter of Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians. I remember him drawing zeros for every attribute the apostle Paul described between verses one and three, beginning with the word: "IF." That is, "If I speak in the tongues of men (0) and of angels (0) but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers (0), and understand all mysteries (0) and all knowledge (0), and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains (0), but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have (0), and if I deliver up my body to be burned (0) but have not love, I gain nothing." I remember him adding zeros after zeros on the blackboard b