November 30, 2024
by Pastor Chuck SwindollScriptures: John 1:14
SOMEBODY COPIED THIS piece from a well-worn carbon in the billfold of a thirty-year veteran missionary. She and her husband were on their way to another tour of duty in Sudan.
SOMEBODY COPIED THIS piece from a well-worn carbon in the billfold of a
thirty-year veteran missionary. She and her husband were on their way to
another tour of duty in Sudan. No one seems to know who authored it, but it
captures the essence of the greatest essay ever written on love.
If I have the language ever so perfectly and speak like a pundit, and have
not the love that grips the heart, I am nothing. If I have decorations and
diplomas and am proficient in up-to-date methods and have not the touch of
understanding love, I am nothing.
If I am able to worst my opponents in argument so as to make fools of them,
and have not the wooing note, I am nothing. If I have all faith and great
ideals and magnificent plans and wonderful visions, and have not the love
that sweats and bleeds and weeps and prays and pleads, I am nothing.
If I surrender all prospects, and leaving home and friends and comforts,
give myself to the showy sacrifice of a missionary career, and turn sour
and selfish amid the daily annoyances and personal slights of a missionary
life, and though I give my body to be consumed in the heat and sweat and
mildew of India, and have not the love that yields its rights, its coveted
leisure, its pet plans, I am nothing, nothing. Virtue has ceased to go out
of me.
If I can heal all manner of sickness and disease, but wound hearts and hurt
feelings for want of love that is kind, I am nothing. If I write books and
publish articles that set the world agape and fail to transcribe the word
of the cross in the language of love, I am nothing. Worse, I may be
competent, busy, fussy, punctilious, and well-equipped, but like the church
at Laodicea—nauseating to Christ.
It reminds me of what John wrote:
The Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing
love and faithfulness.
JOHN 1:14
With the Christmas season upon us, why don't we commit ourselves to a life
that amounts to something?