Great thoughts sometimes come from the most unexpected places.

I was watching a TV show called “Boston Legal,” about a law firm, and a line said, “Love supercedes everything that goes wrong.” It got me to thinking. “Supercedes” means to be superior in status or position.” It means that whatever has been in a life or a person or a memory, love takes precedence. A person truly in love sees the best in the one that’s loved. Even when he or she knows that person’s faults, they tend to fade to the background. I hope it isn’t sacrilegious to say that in that case, love is god.

The Bible turns it around. God is love. And he showed it to us through Jesus Christ, when He asked Jesus to become a sacrifice for we who could never deserve it. And Jesus agreed to do it.

Can we comprehend that? Look at it this way: A mother with a son who has gone wrong, and must pay with his life. She would trade places with him, That’s love. Jesus was the only son of Jehovah God, and God allowed that son to give His life as a sacrifice for YOUR sins. That’s love.

My favorite version of the Bible will always be the King James, but I use a bible that parallels it, page for page, with the Living Bible. And that version has the best interpretation of love in the 13th chapter of First Corinthians:

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”

If you’ve lived those words, you’ve known love. And you’re not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.