The Greatest Is Love

My dad used to tell me that I wear my heart on my sleeve. He's right. I cried when the alien got sick in ET. He tried to talk me out of pursuing medicine because he said I would get too attached to my patients. He's right. Especially if that patient is a child. 

I'm okay with it though. In fact, I don't think I would want it any other way. I mean, I wouldn't mind being able to maintain a tearless eye when I want to, but I do not lament my propensity to care very deeply for the people I encounter.

Every day at 11:15, I step out the door and yell "CIRCLE TIME!" Immediately, six little kindergarteners pop out of whatever corner or room they were playing in and dash up to our special spot in the grass. The majority of the next 45 minutes consists of a Bible story and memory verses. I usually try to review what we covered in school time that morning as well (order of the planets, which body organs do what, etc.).

A couple of weeks ago, it struck me how odd it was that I drill the children on memory verses but was not deliberately memorizing any myself.  I have somehow continually come back to I Corinthians 13 during my quiet times. I'm very familiar with the passage already, so I decided to commit it to memory.

I've probably read that chapter hundreds of times over the years, but somehow I've never actually read it.

Yesterday Timmy was telling me about a British orphanage in Zambia. The missionaries had been run out of the country after several years of devoted work. We talked a lot about the bitterness and frustration that comes when repeated efforts to make a difference are met with resistance or apathy.  I've seen it in nurses in the States-- you beat yourself to death trying to save everyone you come in contact with, and eventually you just burn out.

Later that night I was reading the memory verse taped to my wall.

"If I can speak in the tongues of angels and of men, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal."

If I repeatedly teach and instruct these children and nannies but forget to love them, I am wasting my words.

"If I have the gift of prophesy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."

If I have all the answers to all of their questions (and mine), and if I believe with all of my heart that Zambia can change, but I forget to actively and deliberately love her people, I might as well not even be here.

"If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing."

I can spend the rest of my life feeding starving babies, teaching orphaned children, and providing healthcare in a place that sorely needs it, but I do not do those actions in love and for Love, then at the end of the day and the end of my life, I have gained nothing.

I'm a fixer. I like to solve problems. I like to make things better. I like to create solutions. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with any of that. My gentle reminder from heaven this week has been to search my motives and my attitude. When I'm teaching a nanny something, am I doing it because I love her and the children she is caring for and want the best for them? Can she see that by the way I speak to and interact with her?  When I teach a child to read, does he know that I believe he can change his world, that I'm proud of him, and that I hold him as dear to my heart as my own little brother, or does he only feel my pressure to work harder, read faster, and learn more?

I try to put myself in the shoes of those British missionaries. Would I be bitter and angry? Would I feel resentment towards a people who won't do it "my way?" If my motivation is humanitarian progress, then yes, I probably would.  All the more reason to be fueled by love.

After all...

"Love never fails."