This text came into my life a week or so ago: “If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal” 1 Corinthians 13:1. This chapter from Paul is all about love. You could spend a lifetime reading and meditating on it. For me love is about love received and love given. For me love is certainly about words but more about the way I live my life. I learn more about love from God than from anyone else. This opening verse above is so key: love means little if all I do is talk about it without having it it in my heart and behavior and choices.
I have also learned to love from others who love me and who showed uncommon love. One such person in particular who taught me so much about love was an old man named, Jud, who owned and operated a Lumber and Building Supply Company in Maine when I lived there decades ago.
I worked for Jud at his lumber yard, and one cold, snowy and blustery Saturday, we closed as usual at noon, but not before Jud gave me instructions to load the truck for the two of us to make a delivery on our way home. In the middle of a heavy snowfall we pulled off the main highway and drove through the woods hoping we would not get stuck in the snow. Finally we pulled into the yard where an old trailer stood, and waiting for us in the cold snow were four of Jud’s best friends — giant men who worked as carpenters. For the next four hours we pulled insulation from the truck and insulated the floors and walls and ceiling of the trailer. We replaced the panelling on the walls, pulled out half a dozen of old windows and replaced them with new windows. And finally we installed a brand new wood burning stove. Just as we finished a large truck pulled into the yard and dumped a couple of cords of seasoned fire wood in the driveway. We stacked them underneath the trailer and then headed home. When Jud came home he gave his wife, Pat, the usual amount of cash to buy groceries for their large family for the coming week. This week, however, Bud was a few hundred dollars short, and he then explained to his wife that the lumber yard had a quiet week and this was all he could bring home. But I knew that just as we left the trailer to come home, Jud reached into his pocked and gave the poor family $200 in cash and told me on the way home to say nothing to anyone — especially his wife — about what we just did for that family.
No one in my life has taught me more about generosity and kindness than Jud.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
From the Bible:
“1 If I speak in the tongues of humans and of angels but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part, 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see only a reflection, as in a mirror, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love remain, these three, and the greatest of these is love” 1 Corinthians 13.
Comentários