One of Peachtree’s Grace Habits is to “Believe the Best.” Today’s scripture passage reflects this attitude because love pours out kindness, believes, hopes, and endures all things. If you have ever read a local news story and then looked at the comments, you will not find a whole lot of “believing the best” in those remarks. People who don’t know anything and perhaps didn’t even read the article, condemn, blame, and judge others harshly. They like to feel they know a lot about something when they don’t know much at all, and they like to weigh in like a ton of bricks.
We Christians, even very dedicated ones, are not immune from “Believing the Worst.” We can choose the direst interpretation of the facts about a beloved person or a difficult situation. Instead of reserving judgment, finding out more, asking for the real story or the real explanation, we post or blurt out in public and share our negative, ugly opinions. Others read or hear our words and believe them without finding out the truth for themselves. In place of believing the best when we make this choice, we are encouraging others to believe the worst.
So what are we to do instead? We are to lead with love, a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” Do we go on foolishly believing something that is demonstrably false? No. Does love make itself a doormat to be abused and trodden underfoot? No. Does love believe the best about others and share only what it knows to be kind and true and necessary? Yes. Does love ask questions in private to spare feelings? Does love check its own knee-jerk responses and try to hear what’s behind another’s words or actions? Does love wait patiently, pray hard and persistently, and trust that there will be an answer? Yes and yes and yes. Does love believe and hope and bear it all, even when there is mystery? Yes.
Did love come for us when we were a mess and lost in our own sin? Yes. Did love spread a table in the wilderness and hunger of this world and invite us to come? Yes. Did love believe the best about us, hoping for us to turn around? Does love welcome us when we are unlovable, complaining, and just plain wrong? Yes and yes.
Here is the great good news. We are welcomed. We are loved with the kind of love that bears all things, believes, hopes, and endures all things for our sake and the sake of so many others, all of whom are covered with love. We are people who “Believe the Best” because the best One in the universe believed the best about us.