Love Covers All Wrongs
Senator Alan Simpson said, “Hatred corrodes the container that carries it,” at the funeral of George H. W. Bush. Simpson recalled how Bush embraced humor and love rather hatred. It’s long been a medical fact that when we cling to the negative, our blood pressure rises, our hearts pound, and our spirits sag.
King Solomon observed in Proverbs 10:12, “Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all wrongs.” The conflict in this text refers to a blood feud between rivaling peoples of different tribes and races. This hatred seeks revenge, and the people concerned cannot connect. God’s way of love covers all wrongs. This doesn’t mean that we overlook the wrong, but it does mean that we shouldn’t nurse the wrong.
In one of my previous churches, we had a revival. At the end of the revival, a woman came to the altar with a brick. She said the brick symbolized that there needed to stop being walls built between us. Bricks need to be laid down, and walls need to disappear. I Peter 4:8 says, we who know the Great Lover are to “love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.”
Proverbs 10:12 – “Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers all wrongs.”
By the Rev. Tommy Herndon
Image: Nina Strehl, courtesy of Unsplash