Ruth Haley Barton, in Sacred Rhythms, says that when it comes to deciding what to do in
any situation, we need to step back, pause, and remember that the primary
calling of all Christians is to love. What would love call us to do in this
situation? What would love do? Love is our deepest calling. John tells us of Jesus :
Having loved his own
who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1)
She thinks that any decision that fails to ask the love question misses
the point of Christian practice.
I agree with her.
Yet, love does not solve everything. I find
John Wesley intriguing on this point. He points out that even love in all its
purity will not protect us from many mistakes.[1]
1) Many mistakes may
exist together with pure love.
2) Some may accidently
flow from it. I mean, love itself may incline us to mistake. The pure love of
our neighbor, springing from the love of God, thinks no evil, believes and
hopes all things. Now, this very temperament, unsuspicious, ready to believe
and hope the best of all people, may cause us to think some people are really
better than they are. Here then is a clear mistake accidentally flowing from
love.
In this sense, “love” is not the only answer to life. We need the
balance of other qualities, in particular wisdom, honesty, and discernment, in
order to determine properly what God wants in a situation.
Clearly, we need one another. It is so obvious. Or is it.
Do we really make relationships a priority?
Albert Schweitzer could say in his Memoirs
of Childhood and Youth (1925, p. 87):
When
I look back upon my early days, I am stirred by the thought of the number of
people whom I have to thank for what they gave me or what they were to me. At the same time, I am haunted by an
oppressive consciousness of the little gratitude I really showed them while I
was young. How many of them have said
farewell to life without my having made clear to them what it meant to me to
receive from them so much kindness or so much care! Many a time have I, with a feeling of shame,
said quietly to myself over a grave the words which my mouth ought to have spoken
to the departed, while he was still in the flesh.
There is a little picture of a
turtle on top of fence post. The caption
simply says, "If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know it had
help." We need each other, more than we know.
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