Somebody copied the following paraphrase from a well-worn
carbon in the billfold of a thirty-year veteran missionary. With her husband,
she was on her way to another tour of duty at Khartoum, Sudan. No one seems to
know who authored it, but whoever it was captured the essence of the greatest
essay on love ever written.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.
How about you and me committing ourselves to a life like this .
. . a life that amounts to something . . . rather than nothing.
Each new day God brings our way is a fresh opportunity.
reprint from Chuck Swindoll & Insight for Living
