Love: Where Faith and Hope Come to Life

February is traditionally framed as a month devoted to love. Valentine’s Day is the anchoring celebration for that. It begins when we’re children and trade Valentine’s Day cards with each other and we just keep the tradition going.

But the reality is that the actual practice of love has never been limited to a single day, a single month, or even a single kind of connection. We mark love on anniversaries and birthdays, in moments of remembrance and commitment, in all celebrations of life and legacy. Love shows up wherever the value of something, or someone, is being recognized and celebrated.

Which brings us back to the verse from Scripture we’ve been talking about for the past two months.

“And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love.”

I Corinthians 13:13

We have already explored faith and hope. Not as abstract ideas, but as lived practices. Faith as the practice of trust. Hope as the practice of looking toward what is still possible.

Now we arrive at the third, and the one Scripture calls the greatest.

At first glance, these words can feel puzzling. Faith sustains us. Hope carries us forward. Both matter deeply. And yet, we’re told they are not equal. That love is greater.

The reason, I believe, is simpler and more demanding than we often assume.

Love is not greater because it is a stronger feeling.
It is greater because it is where faith and hope are made visible.

Love is the practice that turns what we believe in and hope for into how we live.

That distinction matters, especially when life becomes complicated or uncertain. And it is why love is greater than faith or hope.
Love is the practice that turns belief into behavior and hope into choice.

Love is where faith and hope come to life.

Practiced love has to meet us where life actually happens and in the ways we relate, the work we tend, the care we extend to ourselves, and the posture we take toward the life we’ve been given.

Instead of asking who we love, practiced love invites a different question:

Where is love being asked of me?

When we ask it that way, love begins to take shape differently.

Four Places Where Love Becomes a Practice

These four places are not shared here to try and define separate kinds of love, nor suggest that they are meant to be practiced in isolation. Instead, together, they describe a way of living where love is not confined to feeling or intention, but expressed through attention, responsibility, and choice.

1.      Relationships

We often associate love primarily with relationships, and rightly so. But practiced love, even toward people, is not measured by intensity or grand gestures.

Here, love is listening when it would be easier to defend. It is patience that resists control.
It is forgiveness that does not depend on erased memory, and boundaries that may disappoint others.

In our relationships, love is not always affirming in the moment, but it is honest. It stays present without abandoning truth. It remains engaged without losing integrity.

2. Our Work

We don’t always speak of love in relation to work, yet much of our life is shaped by what we are called to build, tend, and complete.

Having love within and for our work reframes it as another kind of relationship. Not with productivity or success, but with stewardship.

It is caring for what has been entrusted to us, even when the work is no longer new or glamorous. It is integrity when cutting corners would be faster. It is finishing well, rather than constantly chasing what comes next.

3. Self-love

Love practiced toward ourselves is often misunderstood as indulgence or self-focus. The reality here is that it is one of the most demanding forms of love because it requires discernment rather than depletion.

When self-love is a practice, it tells the truth when self-deception would be easier. It is compassion toward ourselves without requiring justification. It is choosing rest that might feel irresponsible before it feels restorative.

When we practice self-love, we are capable of sustaining care for ourselves as well as the people in our lives, our work, and for life itself.

4. Life Itself

When our lives are shaped by what we believe about the sacred, we recognize that love does not begin with us. Scripture tells us that love originates with God and that it is received before it is practiced, given before it is lived.

This understanding is echoed across many faith traditions, which speak of love as something rooted beyond the self and expressed through how we live.

When we understand that even our existence is preceded by great love, we begin to fully recognize life not as something to manage, but as a gift.

Practicing love for life itself calls us into presence rather than distraction. It is living in a state of grace and accepting a divine plan without requiring certainty.

This kind of love does not attempt to control outcomes or rush past difficulty. It responds rather than reacts. It allows us to live fully in spite of any fear.

Faith and hope can remain inward. Love cannot.

Love insists on expression. On embodiment. On decision.

This is why love is the greatest of these. Not because it feels deeper, but because it demands participation. It asks us to choose, again and again, how we will show up in the lives, work, and responsibilities entrusted to us.

In the end, love is not what we say matters most.

It is what we live as if it does.

I will leave you with two questions, offered as invitations for all of us to live love as a practice.

1.      As you consider these areas of your life (Relationships, Work, Self-love, Life Itself) which one is asking you now for a greater demonstration of love?

2.      What decision can you make today that would allow you to make love a verb?

“And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three. But the greatest of these is love.”

I Corinthians 13:13