To Inspire: As we celebrate Valentine’s Day this week, we might pause to consider this amazing gift we call love.  The ancient Greeks defined four types of love:

1. Eros – romantic love;
2. Storge – the love of family members for one another;
3. Phileo – the affectionate, warm and platonic love of friends;
4. Agape – an unconditional love that enables us to die to self to live for the other.

Agape love is the foundation of the other three loves and nowhere is agape love described more perfectly than in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth in the New Testament (1^st Corinthians 13).  As you read these familiar words below, give thought to how you can begin to truly live them – each and every day.  You might take a particular aspect of love mentioned below and focus for the next week on living it in every aspect of your life – personal and business.  Then move on to the next aspect cited by Paul and focus on it for a week.  Really practice each particular aspect of love – hour after hour.  Perhaps a wristband or setting your phone to ring every hour could be good ways to remind yourself that you’re wanting to live that aspect of love in everything you do and say.

Bottom line, let’s all become persons of love – after all, is there anything else that really matters?

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

And if I was to give all my possessions to the poor and even give my body to be burned, but have not love, I would gain nothing.

 Love is patient; love is kind;

It does not boast, it is not rude, it is not proud;

It is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs;

It does not rejoice in evil but rejoices in the truth;

Love always trusts, always hopes, always believes, always perseveres;

Love never fails.

 But where there are prophecies, they shall fail; and where there are tongues, they shall cease; and where there is knowledge, it shall vanish.  For we know in part and we prophesy in part.  But when that which is perfect comes, then that which is in part shall go away.

When I was a child I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.  But when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see dimly as through a glass; but then we shall see face to face.  Now we know in part, but then we shall know fully, even as we are fully known.

And so abideth these three things – faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these, is love.

(First Corinthians 13)

From all of us at  The Joseph Group, have a great Valentines’ Day!