Week 14 of 14 — Love Always Perseveres
Love Always Perseveres
This Week's Story
Marco grew up in one of the poorest areas of the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. He learned to play the bongos by beating on buckets, because buckets were what he had. He was the boy who once asked if he could play for me.
That boy and three friends — Marco, Johnny, Fresh, and Bruno — became 4 Harmony. They practiced, performed, pushed, and refused to quit, in a country where everything is harder, until one day I watched two teenage girls giggle up to Marco and ask for his autograph. An autograph! It turns out 4 Harmony is the number one band in Haiti. The Beatles of a nation of eleven million. They performed for a sold-out crowd of twenty thousand at the International Music Competition in Chile and took second place in the world. And here's my favorite part: they stayed grounded, humble, and loving. Marco helps fund a school in Borel. Each one of them lifts up projects and people back home.
Most things that take perseverance have a finish line. The marathon ends, the house gets bought, the kids grow up. Love that always perseveres has no finish line. It bolsters, sustains, and upholds — through the hard marriage season, the long illness, the kid who's lost his way. It doesn't always house or bail out or fund, but it never, ever stops loving, and it never stops praying. Jesus once wondered aloud whether He'd find that kind of tenacity when He comes back. Fourteen weeks in, I want the answer to be yes. Starting with me. Starting with you.
Your Challenge This Week
Look back at all thirteen weeks and pick the one that was hardest for you. Do it again this week — and then decide right now that you won't stop when the challenge ends. Because love doesn't have a week fourteen. It just keeps going.
This Week, Day by Day
Which week's word snuck back and tested you today?
What have you kept doing these fourteen weeks that surprised you?
Who has persevered in loving you? Have you told them?
What will be the first thing to slide when the emails stop? Guard it.
What's your plan for Monday, when no email comes?
My Prayer This Week
Lord Jesus, please help me to live this, never quit, always bolster up, love that always perseveres. Help me to see when I do not love this way. Give me the tenacity of 4 Harmony to love with love that always perseveres.
Your Thoughts
Fourteen weeks ago, before any of this started, I asked you to write down what love is. Go dig out that answer. Now answer the same question again, fresh, in the box below — then put the two side by side. The distance between them? That's what you just did. When you're done, add one more line: which week changed you the most, and what's one way you'll keep living it out after today?