LOVE,
POWER OF

A HUSBAND and wife one day were fussing. They were really going at it. So the wife suggested they write down their complaints on a piece of paper and then show the other person exactly how they felt. She thought it might cut down on the bickering. The husband agreed and got the paper. She got out the pencils. They both started writing.

They both wrote furiously for a while. The husband would pause, look at his wife, and write some more. The wife would pause, look up at her husband, and write some more. The husband paused again, looked at his wife with an even angrier look on his face, and then he would write some more. The wife did the same and then put her pencil down. Her husband was still writing. He looked up at her in fury and continued writing. He kept writing. Then he wrote some more. Then he wrote even more. The wife was getting furious because she had covered one side of the page and her husband was finishing the backside of his paper. He kept looking up at her and coming up with more to write. Every time he looked up, something new would come and he’d write some more.

The wife was in pain and agony. She was clenching her fists and tears of anger were welling up in her eyes. Finally, her husband said that he was finished. They exchanged sheets of paper and looked at each other’s sheet. As soon as she gave him her sheet and looked at his, she felt terrible. She wanted to take her sheet back. For when she looked at her husband’s sheet of paper, in spite of his anger and in spite of his pain, he had written on every line, “I love you, I love you, I love you. I’m ticked off, but I love you, I’m angry, but I love you. I don’t want to be here right now, but I love you.” When she saw that much love, it covered the multitude of sins that had brought up the argument in the first place.

When you and I love one another like that, that kind of love can cover up a multitude of sins.588

[Love; Men, and Their Wives; Women, and Their Husbands]

1 Peter 4:8