Paths to Tread

The list of adjectives I have picked up and put down through the years defeats me: “patient, kind, does not envy, does not boast, is not proud, is not rude, does not seek its own way...always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres...” 
I’m glad for the translation of a way as a road, trail, path --­­ something that is an arduous process with a destination -- particularly in the living out of love. 
It is the most excellent journey, not merely the more polite response. 

I’ve walked such a "way" along a cliff atop the Atlantic Ocean where it meets southern Maine, sometimes through the wild roses with their stems strong from the pummeling of wind often as sharp as their brambles, sometimes with space for feet placed heel-­to-­toe-­to-­heel in order to keep to the upward side of the slope, and sometimes where the path openly tumbles into a broad dumping place of round stones that eventually transitions into the sea. 
There is only one curve where the grass is flat on both sides of the level stretch and you can turn to comfortably chat with a companion. At least in my memory, everything and everyone else becomes obliterated by the roaring, roaring, roaring of the sea and the care it takes to stay upright. 
A friend and I have shared boulder perches, and they have been stops to refresh one another. But no amount of encouragement brings us closer to the end--­­ to home. For that, we have to pick our way through the rolling, tumbling field of stones until the path is defined on the other side and we resume our single file journey. 

It’s a short one, that Prouts Neck cliff walk. But the image serves for me as a microcosm of this epic calling to love one another.
It is my nature to lollygag in the grassy places where my care for others is easy because it is reciprocal. 
I want admiration, approbation, compliments and welcome. Leaving that for sharp brambles, treacherous footing, and loneliness is more than I could ever choose, despite the destination promised me. 
I would never get home if the beginning or the keeping on rested in my strength. 

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.