Focus: Three Grand Essentials

Text: 1Cor.13:13

"And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity."

The Apostle Paul has given us three grand essentials for life in this world, namely, faith, hope, and love. These three are not only grand but lasting essentials.

You cannot have a blessed life in this world without these basic spiritual ingredients. Life is empty without them. If you want the blessed life, then faith, hope and love are indispensable possessions that life requires. No one is truly wealthy without them. Just imagine a life devoid of faith, hope, and love! Such a life will be a miserable one.

As you may know, a blessed life is the best life, but in the absence of faith, hope, and love, the best life is impossible.

*Faith

We need faith to live the best life possible. Life begins from the place of faith. Faith connects us to God and the spiritual world. Faith initiates us into the world of limitless possibilities. Armin Gesswein said, "When God is about to do something great, he starts with a difficulty. When he is about to do something truly magnificent, he starts with an impossibility." 

Faith eliminates impossibilities because of its connection with God, for with God nothing is impossible.

We are saved by faith, not by human efforts. Jonathan Edwards has this to say, "You contributed nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary." He hit the nail right on the head by that apt statement of his. Faith gives us the understanding that God is absolutely the hero of our salvation. Faith looks upwards to God. It is the lens by which we see the invisible and the means by which we connect with the transcendental. It gives us the vertical view of life. By faith Moses saw the invisible. Marcel Proust wrote, "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes." We see with the eyes or lens of faith. Margaret Shepard writes that "sometimes your only available transportation is a leap of faith."

Faith is connected to truth. God-revealed truths are the foundation on which faith is built, and in the absence of little or no truth, success is shallow and hollow. The Scripture makes clear that the just shall live by faith. Our life is governed by faith in all its facets.

Faith gives God His rightful place in the world and in our individual lives, and with God at the center of our lives, all other things will naturally fall into place. A. W. Tozer said, "As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once."

*Hope

Paul tells us that "we are saved by hope" (Rom.8:24). Faith as well as hope saves us. A hopeless person is a miserable person. Without hope we have nothing to live for. By faith we look up and by hope we look ahead. We labor for the future because of our hope. Christians have hope beyond this life. In Christ our hope is sure, solid and blessed. Our hope is connected to glory - "the hope of glory."

A hopeless person is a living corpse. Hope is the last thing a person loses before he dies. Hope gives us wings to fly and soar on high. Hope is the music of the soul. Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment." Vaclav Havel said, "Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." 

We all need the divine essential of hope. We cease to live without it. Even our plans are based on hope.

*Love

We are nothing without love. Life is empty without love. Love is a grand essential and a virtue that lasts forever. Love makes sacrifices for others. Love creates balance in God's universe. The music of love is melodious in the hearts of its possessors. Love harmonizes the human personality. Love makes us truly human. Every heart yearns for love.

God is love. Love flows and overflows in every heart where God dwells.

Loving God is the greatest commandment; loving our fellow human beings is the next most important commandment. Love gives and forgives. Owen Feltham said, "Where there is plenty, charity is a duty, not a courtesy." Joseph Campbell says, "love is friendship set to music."

Orson Welles said, "We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone." Love makes living meaningful and fulfilling. We are pitiable and miserable without love. Love is enlivening and strengthening. Love is a grand essential - it's fundamental to our existence, and it lasts for eternity. It is godlike to love. The life of love is the best of lives.

Faith looks up. Hope looks forward. Love looks inwards, and from there it flows outwards to everyone in our space.

In this new year, let us embrace these grand essentials and let them form the basis of our choices and actions at all times.

Bishop Moses E. Peter