This issue of The Tidings, January 2008, marks the 51st year of the series of little articles that have come to be known as Minute Meditations. The first one appeared in the January 1958 edition of this magazine, when I first became the editor.
Now, just think about how much has changed since then. Those who were alive then are now 50 years older or have fallen asleep, and there are literally billions of people who have been born in the last 50 years. A loaf of bread cost 19 cents then, and a gallon of gas was 24 cents. A first class postage stamp was four cents, and the average annual income was $4,650. Nikita Khrushchev was the Soviet leader, and Ike Eisenhower was the president and Richard Nixon the vice president of the United States.
That first minute meditation dealt with the subject of love. It is a subject that never grows old even though we all do. We quoted from the book, The Greatest Thing in the World, by Henry Drummond. There the author lists the nine ingredients of love as outlined by Paul in the thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians. Understanding the components of love is still just as relevant today as it was 50 years ago, and also nearly 2,000 years ago when Paul first penned those words.
Everyone wants to be loved. Brian Tracey has said, “The only thing that you can never have too much of, is love.” How do we get more love? By giving love. How? By putting into practice the ingredients of love as outlined by Paul. Henry Drummond explains that the nine ingredients of love are patience, kindness, generosity, humility, courtesy, unselfishness, good temper, guilelessness, and sincerity. We need to remember and practice all nine of these if we are to show the godly type of love that Paul was preaching. Paul explains, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.”
If all of us were to show love to everyone else by practicing the nine ingredients, we would all feel loved. But is it possible to love everyone? Suppose we don’t feel like loving certain people. Jesus explained to his disciples, “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says we must love our enemies and do good to those who hate us. It can be very difficult at times to love.
Love is not an option. It is a command. Jesus told a lawyer that the first commandment in the law is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls and minds, and the second is to love our neighbor as ourselves. The apostle John helps us to understand why love is so important when he explains, “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Talk is cheap. Many people say they love God and yet do some of the most unloving things to others. This is not love. The apostle John tells us, “If anyone says, ‘I love God’, yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
John emphasizes that love is not just something to talk about but something to live out in actions. “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” We cannot claim we love unless we are doing loving things. To say we love and then do nothing is meaningless — we are simply mouthing empty words. We must show our love for God by performing loving actions to our fellows, by being patient and kind to them, generously forgiving and protecting them, seeking their well being.
We concluded our first meditation with these words and we will do so again. “The task before us is to put these nine ingredients to work in our everyday lives. Love is not a thing of enthusiastic emotion; it is a rich, strong, manly, vigorous expression of the true brother and sister of Christ. ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God.’ ”
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One