The Spectrum of Love

Drummond breaks down Paul’s “amazing analysis of what this supreme thing is,” by assigning 9 ingredients to what he describes as “The Spectrum of Love”from verses 4-7

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ESV)

Right out of the gate, Drummond writes the following word picture.

“It is like light. As you have seen a man of science take a beam of light and pass it through a crystal prism, as you have seen it come out on the other side of the prism broken up into its component colours – red, and blue, and yellow, and violet, and orange, and all the colours of the rainbow – so Paul passes this thing, Love, through the magnificent prism, of his inspired intellect, and it comes out on the other side broken up into its elements. And in these few words we have what one might call the Spectrum of Love, the analysis of Love. Will you observe what its element are? Will you notice that they have common names; that they are virtues which we hear about every day; that they are things which can be practised by every man in every place in life; and how, by a multitude of small things and ordinary virtues, the supreme thing, the summum bonum, is made up?

The Spectrum of Love has nine ingredients: –

Patience:             ‘Love suffereth long’                                                                                             Kindness:           ‘And is kind.’                                                                                                           Generosity:        ‘Love envieth not.’                                                                                                 Humility:            ‘Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.’                                             Courtesy:            ‘Doth not behave itself unseemly.’                                                       Unselfishness:   ‘Seeketh not her own.’                                                                                             Good Temper:    ‘Is not easily provoked.’                                                                           Guilelessness:    ‘Thinketh no evil.’                                                                                                 Sincerity:             ‘Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.’

… – these make up the supreme gift. …We hear much of love to God; Christ spoke much of love to man. We make a great deal of peace with heaven; Christ made much of peace on earth. Religion is not a strange or added thing, but the inspiration of the secular life, the breathing of an eternal spirit through this temporal world. The supreme thing, is short, is not a thing at all, but the giving of a further finish to the multitudinous words and acts which make up the sum of every common day.”

There are an incredible amount of great quotes to choose from and I am telling you it is difficult to limit what I want to write here, but I do want to whet your appetite for more.

Under Kindness Drummond write:

“The greatest thing says some one a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children. I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. How much the world needs it. How easily it is done. How instantaneously it acts. How infallibly it is remembered. How super-abundantly it pays itself back – for there is no debtor in the world so honourable, so superbly honourable, as Love. Love never faileth. Love is success. Love is happiness. Love is life. ‘Love I say,’ with Browning, ‘is energy of Life.”

I am not going to quote it here but the explanation of “Courtesy” is probably one of my favorites, Drummond uses the example of Robert Burns who is describe as “no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet” because he loved everything and everyone.

“The next ingredient is a very remarkable one: Good Temper. ‘Love is not easily provoked.’ Nothing could be more striking than to find this here. We are inclined to look upon bad temper as a very harmless weakness. We speak of it as a mere infirmity of nature, a family failing, a matter of temperament, not a thing to take into very serious account in estimating a man’s character. And yet here, right in the heart of this analysis of love, it finds a place; and the Bible again and again returns to condemn it as one of the most destructive elements in human nature.”

I’ve fallen into the category of being one of those who has over the course of my life given in to being angry, ill-tempered. The temptation was to not quote on this part at all, yet it is so powerful and convicting. The LORD continues to mold and shape me. He gave me a prayer when I wasn’t even 30 years old, “God save me from being angry, how can I be helpful in this situation. Not my will but thy will be done.”  There is hope for me! Drummond proclaims it here.

“Analyse, as a study in Temper, that thunder-cloud itself as it gathers upon the Elder Brother’s brow (this is the Elder brother of the Prodigal son). What is it made of? Jealousy, anger, pride, uncharity, cruelty, self-righteousness, touchiness, doggedness, sullenness – these are the ingredients of this dark and loveless soul. … Hence it is not enough to deal with the Temper. We must go to the source, and change the inmost nature, and the angry humours will die away of themselves. Souls are made sweet not by taking the acid fluids out, but by putting something in – a great Love, a new Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. Christ, the Spirit of Christ, interpenetrating ours, sweetens, purifies, transforms all. This only can eradicate what is wrong, work a chemical change, renovate and regenerate, and rehabilitate the inner man. Will-power does not change men. Time does not change men. Christ does. Therefore ‘Let that mind be in you which is also in Christ Jesus.’ Some of us have not much time to lose. Remember, once more, that this is a matter of life or death.”

Now for some one liners:

“The only greatness is unselfish love.”

“The most obvious lesson in Christ’s teaching is that there is no happiness in having and getting anything, but only in giving.”

“It is better not to live than not to love.”

“Is life not full of opportunities for learning Love?”

“So much for the analysis of Love. (although, I’ve just given you a taste of it here.) 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 to Love.”

 

We are all pilgrims

In John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Pilgrim sets out on a journey and soon discovers that companions are welcomed along the road of life. It is a dangerous journey and it is only a matter of time that we will either need help or be the one to offer help to another.

In thinking about being pilgrims together in light of “disarming love” and what that means, I had to go back to my defining post. What I discovered is the love that has the power to disarm a person is transmitted through another person. The transfer of love from one person to another requires vulnerability which leaves the door wide open to pain and heartache.

Over the past couple of days a friend of mine showed me her heartbreak. Julie had demonstrated love to someone who does not know how to receive it. This other person is starving for love but will not and perhaps cannot trust people, I suppose for a variety of reasons, and therefore is unable to receive love. I’m not making any kind of a diagnosis here, I am simply remembering: people reaching out to me, doing their best to help me and show me that I am lovable and all I could do was push people away, even though I too was hungry for love. What was wrong with me? I believed that I was unlovable and unwanted. It is not really that simple, people are complicated, but I have come to believe that the lies I believed about myself, other people, and the world are at the core of the issues surrounding my trouble with relationships.

I’ve only known Julie for about 18 months and our friendship has grown and we do love each other. When she called me, I could hear the pain in her voice. So we’ve been journeying on the pilgrim road the past couple of days. There has been struggle. When we do our best to love and it is rejected and even worst unappreciated and called something less than loving, the pain from that is real. To see Julie hurting over this has made my own heartache and at times I have wanted to take matters into my own hands, but wisdom says to show restraint. There are two things that I realize: man’s anger does not produce the righteousness of God and it is hard to control my anger when it is fueled by love for my friend. I wanted to defend in an offensive way. Submitting to the LORD, I see that I must continue to detach with love as I have counseled Julie to do so.

Most of us are born into a family. We were not meant to walk through this life alone, yet more and more people are doing just that. Isolation is more common than it ought to be. Like Bunyan’s Pilgrim sometimes we need to walk alone to become aware of the fact that we need each other. Without our fellow travelers we can not experience the love of God as it was meant to be experienced. One of Jesus’ names is Emmanuel, meaning “God with us.” Jesus too was born into a family, had earthly parents and siblings, came to redeem God’s children, and demonstrated the love of God through his living and dying with and for His people.

This is just a glimpse of two days with a couple of pilgrims. Our pilgrimage lasts a life time and it is worth taking time to pause and reflect on the trip thus far every once in a while. May each of you journey on in faith especially when you question whether or not it is worth going on. It always is.

Transportation to hyperLinks I love

“Why do you want to live tomorrow? It is because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with and love back.”                                                                                           from Henry Drummond’s The Greatest Thing in the World

Disarmed by Love was started because in fact, a very small group of life-giving friends, who have never met each other reached out to me with Love and showed me that my life was worth living. Only one of them has a blog and it will be one of the ones listed here.

Five Blogs that I read regularly

“God, help us love each other as family – that we would freely open our homes to each other and serve each other as Jesus served those He called His brothers and sisters when He walked the earth. Again and again, we need to forgive each other well and show grace to each other…”  a part of a prayer that I’ve prayed and experienced through my brothers and sisters of Emmaus City Church 

The sending church for Emmaus City Church in Worcester is Sacred Journey in Providence RI. Evan Whitman wrote on church planting, “Immerse yourself in the demographic culture that you will be serving. Get to know the people and be involved with others lives before you plant. Try and meet the needs of people long before you plant. Be proactive and engaged. If you think you are going to “parachute drop” in from another part of the country and be effective without first getting to know the culture you are sorely mistaken, especially in New England, and primarily Rhode Island. Being in the workforce prior to planting has served well for two planters that I know intimately.”  We have had the honor of worshipping with and receiving the love of our “southern” brothers and sisters at Sacred Journey Church

Loving the people of the LGBTQ community is the posture that all Christians ought to have. Unfortunately, that is not the case more often than not and to our shame. However, there is hope and one ministry that is leading the way, started right here in MA is Lead Them Home.  “We need to publicly apologize for the way the Church has often treated LGBT persons. Then, we should share the Gospel in a personal and authentic way that does not drive people away from Jesus, but rather attracts them toward the Savior who loves them as much as He loves us. We must be honest about our own imperfections so that it is clear we are not judging them. Above all, we should listen to their stories and seek to understand LGBT people and their needs. In short, we should encounter them in the same spirit with which Christ encounters us.” taken from “Our Vision” at Lead Them Home

Since I am a woman and I do read one of the contributing writers on a semi-regular basis, I thought that I would give a plug for the larger group of women as opposed to just one writer. The website which is includes a blog is basically women loving and encouraging women and it is true, women can be mean. And the truth is we need each other.  “When we asked ourselves what kind of place we were building, we finally came to see it as a bit like a beach house. It’s that place where you can put your sandy, dirty feet on the coffee table, laugh late into the night with girlfriends, and hear God’s voice through our shared, broken, beautifully redeemed every day stories. It’s the place where you’re always welcome, just the way you are.” from their story  at (in)courage

Finally, one of the sisters who kidnapped me back in 2004, Lisa writes about life in such an engaging way. It is like we are sitting down having a chat over coffee. I appreciate my truly southern sister. Lisa’s story is unfolding slowly on her blog, everytime I visit I want more because Lisa knows how to transport you to places like Romania where they adopted one of their gang of kids.  “Eight months old. This baby, though, sits like a sack of beans, like one of those beanie-baby animals, and her arms lie limp at her sides like a one-month-old.  The eyes, however.  They are looking at Lisa, right into her eyes. She’s alive, thinks Lisa; she’s curious. But man, does she stink….” from Earthy No Longer

Anonymity

Tradition 11 states: “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, T.V. and films.”
Recently, some of my fellow travelers and I had a good conversation around the topic of anonymity and the internet, specifically, Facebook. The traditions from 12 step programs were written before the world wide web was launched. This is still a gray area. And when it comes to places like social networking, some people are all out there, some creep, lots of us are in between and others just avoid it all together.
My last post I obviously or not so obviously, broke my own anonymity. For nearly 30 years I have been involved with 12 step fellowships. I hesitate to even write that since I am not a fan of labels. If you must categorize me, let me be a Narnian, daughter of Eve (fantasy land of CS Lewis). Lewis said, “I am a soul, I have a body.” I am a pilgrim journeying from this life into the next. I am not looking to promote any of the 12 step fellowships but I have decided to share some of my experience here on my blog. I will safeguard the anonymity of my fellow travelers by calling them my fellow travelers.
Since, I have been experiencing a disarming love in the fellowship of ACA, I decided sharing some of that was appropriate since it is having a great influence on my pilgrimage.