out of the mouth of babes

At church as of late, we have had a sermon series focused on "the love chapter," 1 Corinthians 13. This week at Wired small group, we spent some time talking to our high school students about love and asked them to interpret 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 in their own words. Here is what one of our students came up with:

If I can recite my entire history book out loud in front of my whole class, but don't have love, I'm just a headache. If I can figure out the end of every movie I see, and if I have enough faith to bungee jump off a cliff--WITHOUT THE BUNGEE--and trust God to catch me, and don't have love, I'm not getting anything to my benefit. If I give to every Christian organization and then go and be a beggar, but have no love, it was all pointless.

Love doesn't mind waiting in lines; it is kind whenever someone hates it; it's not jealous of the girl who's always the center of attention; it doesn't see itself as even a tiny bit better than anyone else. Love isn't rude enough to take the last piece of it's favorite cake when there's a little kid behind it in line who wants it; it doesn't blow up when someone says something rude, and it doesn't gossip to friends about how many times a person gave you a mean look. Love is really nice, and it hates lies. It stands up for it's little brother; it really hopes that your most competitive teammate does well, and it loves it when it finally scored an A in algebra.

Pretty insightful huh? I love seeing high school students who really "get it" and are living their lives for Jesus, mostly because it took me until high school to even start pursuing Christ and I wish I would have "gotten it" sooner.

Just for fun, here are our pictorial representations of the opposite of 1 Corinthians 13:

Love is patient

Love is kind

[Love] does not boast