Week 11—Saturday 1 John 4:16-19
Week 11—SATURDAY
“I HAVE DECIDED TO DO IT JUST FOR THE FUN OF IT”
We continue our study of the sovereign necessity of love in the human personality. For ten years a patient in Sweden lay on her bed, disliked by everybody. For two years she never spoke a word. A Christian nurse decided what she needed was love, and gave it to her. In a few days she spoke for the first time, “How kind you are.” In two weeks she was out and well. Today, she is well and useful and respected and loved! Her malady was that she did not receive love or give it. So she was an invalid for ten years—love-starved!
A government hospital was set up alongside a mission hospital, obviously to kill it. The government hospital made no charge, the mission hospital did. But the mission hospital is growing by leaps and bounds. The people flock to it, for there they get love. And without love patients get well slowly or not at all.
One would hardly expect this from Bertrand Russell, the skeptical philosopher: “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to human happiness.” He was never more profoundly right. I have quoted at length in Christian Maturity what he said before Columbia University when he declared in essence: “What I’m going to suggest is so simple that it sounds absurd. But I see no remedy for the world’s ills except love.”
A taxi driver was so polite and helpful that a friend asked him about it. He replied, “Well, I heard of a taximan who was kind to a passenger and found that he was remembered in the man’s will for $65,000. So I thought I would try it—somebody might leave me something! But after trying it I found it was so much fun that I decided to do it just for the fun of it—reward or no reward.” He found he was made for love, and when he gave it the reward was in himself.
O Jesus, my Savior and Lord, I thank you for the privilege of loving you and loving those whom you love—everybody! Help me this day to form the habit of loving and of loving lavishly. And know that the reward is in myself. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall ask for no reward save the reward of loving.