If I walked up to you and said “a gutn, vas makhstu”, would that mean anything to you? Probably not, unless you speak Yiddish. Now, if I walked up to you and said “Hey! How are you?”, would that mean something to you? Of course it would, you speak English. If I just spew words at you in a language that you don’t speak, it doesn’t mean anything to you. However, if I didn’t speak your language but I walked up and hugged you, you would understand that I was greeting you with love. 

 

Love is a universal connector. You might not understand a child in Haiti asking you to teach them to tie their shoes, but you would understand a smile or a hug. Love connects us to all people. It is a universal language that everyone speaks. 

 

1 Corinthians 13:8 says that “Where there are tongues, they will be stilled”. Going back to my Yiddish analogy, if you don’t speak a language, anything I say to you in that language means nothing to you; not because it doesn’t have value, but because you don’t understand it. However, if we all spoke the same language, the need for other languages is nullified. The thing that Paul is trying to communicate to the people in Corinth is this: we do all speak the same language. We all speak love. The people who get hung up on not being able to decipher if someone is talking about the red rock or the white rock are missing the point: love is a unifying language that does not require a translator. 

 

Sure, there are different cultures that have different ideas about how to demonstrate love, but from birth, all of the human race understands what love is. In different cultures, love may be demonstrated with a kiss on the cheek. While that may not be how our culture demonstrates love, we understand that a kiss on the cheek is a loving gesture. While there are a select few people who do misunderstand love, the majority of the human race understands that a hug is loving and not evil. 

 

Where there is love, the need for translation between languages is diminished. Where there are language disputes, love will quell the problem and bring unity to all. Love is our unifying language.