but the greatest of these...

is love.

question number one: what is faith?
faith is the belief in the trustworthiness of an idea. look it up if you dont believe me. when we say we dont have faith, what we are saying is that we dont trust. or that whatever it is that we are supposed to have faith in, is not trustworthy.
i don't trust well.
i don't trust often.
but sometimes trust can sneak up on you and you dont realize that you are in fact, trusting. for example, currently, i am trusting that the chair i am sitting on will not break despite the awesome italian food (and how many pieces of bread..?) that i had tonight. trust is believing that my alarm clock will in fact go off in the morning - not that i necessarily need it - but i trust in technology. but in terms of trusting people - not so much. why is that? i dont necessarily lack a 'trust' in them initially - much like i dont un-trust the chair will hold me up - but once that first chair gives out on me - i will be less likely to trust the next. does that make sense?

faith and trust are sometimes more for the other person to keep their word in what they said they would do, than it is for us to extend the notion in the first place. it is to maintain a certain level of 'trustworthiness.' if someone decides to trust you, please dont blow it. it could be detrimental to the rest of this process.

question number two: what is hope?
i have it tattooed on my wrist: esperanza. hope in espanol... i got this tattoo when the only thing i had to hang onto was hope. hope that God wasn't going to leave me where i was. hope that this was not the best He had for me. hope that it was going to get better - and that where i was at the time was not where i was going to stay. i didnt know what that would look like for me, i just knew that i had nothing else. hope is why we get out of bed in the morning. so to me, the answer is simple. hope is necessary.

question number three: what is love?
if you know me at all, you know how i feel about this. i dont say it often, but when i do, i mean it with everything i am. i dont joke about it and i dont take it lightly. love has been so skewed and so taken out of its truest context. when the unChristian hears "God is love" no wonder they aren't attracted to Him... first ask what they think 'love' is...

we have to correct this idea of 'conditional love' because that is an oxymoron.

there is absolutely nothing conditional about love.

feelings and emotions can be conditional - love cannot. love is real. love is eternal...

faith (and trust) leads to having a hope in something bigger and better than where you are... but its love that makes you believe it.

im not entirely sure why this is what i wrote tonight... because of all things, tonight my heart is hurting. i feel like ive let people down, and i feel very discouraged. i feel unworthy of this type of affection. but maybe thats why i write... to try to feel the things that i dont necessarily feel. tonight i was told that i would have to just let somebody 'prove it' to me... to prove that they were in this for the long haul... that what they said, they believed... and that there was no amount of control that i really had in this situation except to have a little faith in them... a little hope that it was true... and the ability to let them love me the way it was intended...

love is proven.