Love

I had a conversation the other day with one of my sons about love. It is so very important that we talk to our children about love - especially in a culture that teaches the opposite of love. We went through the following verses together...
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
It helped us to go through this scripture thinking about what the opposite of love might be. Love is kind... the opposite of kind is unkind, the opposite of love is hate - so hate is unkind...
So to put this in other words - Hate is pushy and easily frustrated, Hate us unkindness, Hate is envious and braggadocios, Hate is arrogant and rude, Hate insists on it's own way, Hate is irritable and resentful, Hate rejoices in wrongdoing, Hate rejoices in lies. Hate will not bear with you, Hate will not believe in you, Hate has no hope for the future, Hate will not endure a trial.

1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

"But when we rise to agape, to Christian love, it is higher than all of this. It becomes the love of God operating in the human heart. The greatness of it is that you love every man, not for your sake but for his sake. And you love every man because God loves him. And so it becomes all inclusive. The person may be ugly, or the person may be beautiful. The person may be tall, or the person may be short. The person may be light, or the person may be dark. The person may be rich, or the person may be poor. The person may be up and in; the person may be down and out. The person may be white; the person may be black. The person may be Jew; the person may be Gentile. The person may be Catholic; the person may be Protestant. In other words, you come to the point of loving every man and becomes an all-inclusive love. It is the love of God operating in the human heart. And it comes to the point that you even love the enemy. Christian love does something that no other love can do. It says that you love every man. You hate the deed that he does if he's your enemy and he's evil, but you love the person who does the evil deed." MLK Jr. 1962