Love Covers

Transcript

Hello, my friend… so glad you're with me today. This is By God's Call — day 208, Love Covers.

"Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses." Proverbs 10:12.

This is a short, one-line proverb, but it carries enormous weight once we actually stop to think about it. Solomon places two forces side by side, like two seeds planted in the same soil that grow into completely different fruit.

The first: hatred stirs up strife. Notice the verb — stirs, wakes up, agitates. It's the picture of a heart that keeps digging through the past, looking for reasons to keep a fight alive. It's the kind of grudge that never cools; it gets fed, rehearsed, retold to anyone who will listen. Hatred doesn't let the ember die out — it blows on it.

Love does the opposite: it covers. And I need to pause here and explain this word carefully, because it's easy to confuse it with pretending nothing happened. Covering isn't that. Covering doesn't mean saying the offense never occurred, or acting like it didn't hurt. It means choosing not to expose it. Choosing not to use that mistake as a weapon in the next argument. Choosing not to tell everyone what that person did. It is an active decision to protect, not a passive denial of reality.

And this principle doesn't stay locked in the Old Testament. Peter, writing centuries later to the Christian church, quotes this exact proverb almost word for word when describing how love should function among believers. That shows this ancient wisdom hasn't aged — it remains the standard God expects from anyone who follows Christ.

But here is the point I want you to carry through the rest of today: it's easy to agree with this verse in theory. It's easy to say "yes, love covers, that makes sense" on a calm morning over coffee. The real test comes the next time someone hurts you — on purpose or by accident — and you're standing at a fork with two roads: spread it, tell others, keep it as ammunition; or cover it, let it rest, choose not to use it against them.

I want to ask you, gently: is there a recent offense — it could be small, it could be big — that you still bring up to other people? That you still use as proof that so-and-so is just like that, always was, never changes? Maybe it's time to stop retelling that story.

Today, choose this: one specific offense, and decide to cover it for good. You don't have to pretend it didn't hurt. You just have to stop spreading it.

Stay close to God. Pray — then act. I'll see you tomorrow, my friend.