I always read the whole chapter. Today’s verse of the day was 1 Corinthians 13:6, so that’s where I started, and I kept going. What I memorized in 1995 was verses 4 through 7. That year I was told to try a youth group, and I was open enough to go. At that group another kid told me to memorize a Bible verse, and someone taught me how to pray. I’ve carried those verses for thirty-one years. This morning, reading on to the end of the chapter, verse 13 hit me like never before.

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” — 1 Corinthians‬ ‭13‬:‭13‬ ‭ESV‬‬

The word is menō. It means to remain, to stay put, to endure. Tongues will cease. Prophecy will fail. Knowledge will pass away. Everything I’ve ever leaned on gets stripped away in that sentence, and what’s left standing is faith, hope, and love. They abide.

I’ve said that word for years, and this morning I saw that it doesn’t say abiding. It says abide. Abiding is something I do. They abide whether I’m doing anything or not. They never leave. They’re like the ground, like gravity, like the air I’m breathing right now. I didn’t earn any of it, and I can’t lose any of it.

I just realized I have been stepping out of the boat, and sinking, by choice. The truth is that I am on solid ground, all of the time.

Of all the things I’m challenged by, the chief has been my emotions, and I’ve battled depression, even sober. All my studying, practicing, seeking has pointed me toward hope, trust, and faith. Trusting a God I don’t understand, setting aside my old sense of reality and self to embrace a true identity, takes all three. I get it from others, and the image of God as all of humanity makes sense to me. But I have not fully understood love. And Paul says it’s the greatest.

The love I memorized in verses 4 through 7, the patient, kind, bearing, believing, hoping, enduring love, has been there the whole time. It was never out of reach. It was a choice away. My attitude has been under my control this entire time.

And the choice is in the steps. Step 3 doesn’t say I came to feel something or understand something. It says “made a decision.” Jesus uses the same word as Paul in John 15: abide in me. The ground is already there, and the decision is mine.

That choice has to come before the shop, before the phone, before the noise. I’m beyond grateful.

They abide. And I can choose.