Love and the Journey

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love. –excerpt from 1 Corinthians 13, The Message

If I think of salvation as an "event", rather than the journey it is, and have not love, then that sin nature I was so definitely born with churns with pride. With each event that I think will prove THE event. As I live out the process of sanctification, daily, moment by moment, meeting God for today, I don't have to feel guilt or "give up" because the journey continues until we meet face to face. I have not failed, I am in-process as a work not yet complete.

Molly over at Adventures In Mercy put it this way:
When you are on a journey, you aren’t trying to be perfect. You are simply trying to remain on the process of journeying. If you stumble, you get up, wipe off your knees and keep going. You can even sit down and pull out a picnic lunch from your backpack. It’s all okay. None of the perfectionistic hysterics about messing up. You don’t mess up when you’re on a journey. You might trip, but that’s part of the journey. A journey is both/and. It was a one-time event, the day you set your foot on this trail and decided to follow it. But it is also a process, a way you travel, a ever-unfolding experience.
One-time-event salvation is dangerous because it reduces following Christ to a legal transaction. Following Christ becomes “an event that happened,” not a Way we travel, and that is dangerous because it just isn’t true and it sucks the life right out of what really is true. You sit down and never go anywhere, waiting for heaven, waiting for the Left Behind series to come to life. You miss the journey altogether.
And salvation-is-rule-following is even worse. If you weren’t an anxiety-ridden basketcase (or a first-class faker) before you started, honey, you will be before you're done. ://adventuresinmercy.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/the-way-of-love/

Some things are important, necessary. Giving my husband support when dealing with bad days at work (met CMPD's new Chief?....nuf said) , caring for our home, homeschooling the children, taking care of my parents. However, if Ihave not love, these things become burdens, done out of pride and expectation of praise or fear of man's judgement. More than outward appearances of happy husband, a clean house, well-educated children and cared for parents, I want all of those areas to exhibit love. The love we have for each other and the love we have for God.