I've been reading through "The Greatest Thing in the World", a small book by Henry Drummond on love and 1 Corinthians 13. To say that I have been challenged by it would be an understatement! I have realized how little I truly know about biblical love and how much selfishness I have in me that yet needs to be gotten rid of. Below are some of his concluding thoughts on love that so challenged me and I hope will bless and challenge you as well. BTW, if you are interested in reading the entire book, they have it online for free reading and downloading here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16739/16739-h/16739-h.htm
~Breanna
So much for the analysis of Love. Now the business of our lives is to have these things fitted into our characters. That is the supreme work to which we need to address ourselves in this world, to learn Love. Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love? Every man and woman every day has a thousand of them. The world is not a playground; it is a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday, but an education. And
THE ONE ETERNAL LESSON
for us all is how better we can love.
What makes a man a good cricketer? Practice. What makes a man a good artist,
a good sculptor, a good musician? Practice. What makes a man a good linguist, a
good stenographer? Practice. What makes a man a good man? Practice. Nothing
else. There is nothing capricious about religion. We do
not get the soul in different ways, under different laws, from those in which
we get the body and the mind. If a man does not exercise his arm he develops no
biceps muscle; and if a man does not exercise his soul, he acquires no muscle
in his soul, no strength of character, no vigor of moral fibre, no beauty of
spiritual growth. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion. It is a rich,
strong, manly, vigorous expression of the whole round Christian character—the
Christlike nature in its fullest development. And the constituents of this
great character are only to be built up by
CEASELESS PRACTICE.
What was Christ doing in the carpenter's shop? Practising. Though perfect,
we read that He learned obedience, and grew in wisdom and in favor with
God. Do not quarrel, therefore, with your lot in life. Do not complain of its
never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand,
the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with. Above all, do not
resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you
more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer. That is
your practice. That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having
its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and
kind, and courteous. Do not grudge the hand that is moulding the still too
shapeless image within you. It is growing more beautiful, though you see it
not; and every touch of temptation may add to its perfection. Therefore keep in
the midst of life. Do not isolate yourself. Be among men and among things, and
among troubles, and difficulties, and obstacles. You remember
Goethe's words: "Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the
stream of life." Talent develops itself in solitude—the talent of prayer,
of faith, of meditation, of seeing the unseen; character grows in the stream of
the world's life. That chiefly is where men are to learn love.How? Now, how? To make it easier, I have named a few of the elements of love. But these are only elements. Love itself can never be defined. Light is a something more than the sum of its ingredients—a glowing, dazzling, tremulous ether. And love is something more than all its elements—a palpitating, quivering, sensitive, living thing. By synthesis of all the colors, men can make whiteness, they cannot make light. By synthesis of all the virtues, men can make virtue, they cannot make love. How then are we to have this transcendent living whole conveyed into our souls? We brace our wills to secure it. We try to copy those who have it. We lay down rules about it. We watch. We pray. But these things alone will not bring love into our nature. Love is an effect. And only as we fulfill the right condition can we have the effect produced. Shall I tell you what the cause is?
If you turn to the Revised Version of the First Epistle of John you find these words: "We love because He first loved us." "We love," not "We love Him." That is the way the old version has it, and it is quite wrong. "We love—because He first loved us." Look at that word "because." It is the cause of which I have spoken. "Because He first loved us," the effect follows that we love, we love Him, we love all men. We cannot help it. Because He loved us, we love, we love everybody. Our heart is slowly changed. Contemplate the love of Christ, and you will love. Stand before that mirror, reflect Christ's character, and you will be changed into the same image from tenderness to tenderness. There is no other way. You cannot love to order. You can only look at the lovely object, and fall in love with it, and grow into likeness to it. And so look at this Perfect Character, this Perfect Life. Look at
THE GREAT SACRIFICE
as He laid down Himself, all through life, and upon the Cross of
Calvary; and you must love Him. And loving Him, you must become like Him. Love
begets love. It is a process of induction. Put a piece of iron in the presence
of an electrified body, and that piece of iron for a time becomes electrified.
It is changed into a temporary magnet in the mere presence of a permanent
magnet, and as long as you leave the two side by side, they are both magnets
alike. Remain side by side with Him who loved us, and
GAVE HIMSELF FOR US,
and you, too, will become a permanent magnet, a permanently
attractive force; and like Him you will draw all men unto you, like Him you
will be drawn unto all men. That is the inevitable effect of Love. Any man who
fulfills that cause must have that effect produced in him.
~Henry Drummond
