Thursday, April 20, 2023
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Speak to us of love
We must obey God rather than men.
All the hobbies in the world, but if you have not love, you have nothing.
And what about my little luxuries? Like toast in the morning, ice cream in the afternoon … like a white Prius that runs and runs and runs … like a pillow that fits perfectly under my head … like a subscription to any number of streaming channels and baseball networks … I think I’ve only just got started. If you have not love, you have nothing.
The hobbies and little luxuries are what Chris, my friend visiting from India, calls meaningful trivialities. They matter, but only in the context of something else that surrounds them and suffuses them and makes them matter.
C. S. Lewis calls that “something else” charity. Or to my simple brain, he calls it love. And he makes a very strong case that love is not trivial, but meaningful and necessary. It is the gardener that turns the garden into glory.
We are witnesses of these things, as is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.
But there is something dangerous about loving, and it needs to be understood:
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket—safe, dark, motionless, airless—it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. (from C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves, the chapter on Charity)
Doesn’t he just have a way of saying things? The only place I can unlock my closed-to-love heart is in hell. Not OK. Tragedy (or at least the risk of tragedy) is what I must accept as the only and best alternative.
The Lord confronts the evildoers, to destroy remembrance of them upon the earth. When the just cry out, the Lord hears them, and from all their distress he rescues them.
So as best I can I give my love to Margaret. As best I can I return my love to God. And Lewis points out that “every stranger whom we feed or clothe is Christ. We are loving God whether we know it or not.” I pass along what I have received. “And Love Himself can work in those who know nothing of him.”
The one who God sent speaks the words of God. He does not ration his gift of the Spirit. The Father loves the Son and has given everything over to him. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life.
There is nothing here for any of us, givers or receivers, partakers all, but pure joy.
 (Acts 5, Psalm 34, John 20, John 3)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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