1 Corinthians 13:8-13: in context

This is the end of Paul's famous chapter on love, and after all the soaring lines about patience and kindness, he turns to what lasts. Love never ends, he says, and then he lists the things that do end. Prophecy will pass away, tongues will fall silent, knowledge will be done away with. The spiritual gifts the Corinthians were prizing and fighting over are temporary scaffolding. Love is the only thing on the list that survives into eternity.

Then he gives the reason our grip on everything else is so partial. We know in part and we prophesy in part, he says, and he reaches for two images. One is childhood: what looked complete to me as a child, I set aside as I grew, and our present understanding is childlike compared to what is coming. The other is a mirror. The mirrors of Paul's world were polished bronze, and they gave a dim, blurry reflection, and that, he says, is how we presently see, in a mirror, darkly. But then, face to face. And here comes the line that carries the comfort: now I know in part, but then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. My knowing is blurry and partial. But I am already, right now, fully known. The seeing is uneven, and the peace is on the side that is already settled.

That is where a person can rest. I do not see God, or others, or even myself clearly yet; I only know in part, and I am not going to get the full picture on demand. But I do not have to, because I am already completely known by the one who sees me face to face. Can I live at peace with knowing only in part, resting in the fact that I am already fully known, instead of demanding to see it all clearly now?