Daily Devotional corner, your go-to spot for a splash of spiritual refreshment. Every day, we pick a piece from the good book and toss in some real-world reflections to brighten your path. Whether you're kicking off your morning or just taking a breather, these bits of insight have got your back. Drop by every day for a dose of inspiration and a touch of soulful connection. Let's navigate life's ups and downs together!
“I Killed That Boy…”
Love is not something that happens to you, love is something you do.
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now, we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:4-13)
I often read this at weddings, and in that setting, it can be heard by the young couple as a hope more than an accomplishment, a promise more than a reality.
I also read it at funerals—where we are celebrating a life fully lived in using one’s gifts for others, you know love.
For the Bible, love is both a gift from God and a choice.
Love is: Not the movie-magic heart fluttering we associate with romance, but the daily choices we make…the ways we act…the repeated way we choose to organize our lives for someone else.
As Scott Peck said in the classic book The Road Less Traveled, love is work. “Love is not a feeling,” he says. He added, “keeping an eye on a four- year- old at the beach, concentrating on the interminable disjointed story told by a six-year-old, teaching a teenager how to drive, truly listening to the tale of your spouse’s day…all these tasks are often boring, frequently inconvenient, and always energy-draining. They mean work.”
Writer and teacher Jack Kornfield often tells the true story of a young man who wanted to join a gang.
This young man had to prove himself worthy by shooting someone. He went out and shot someone he didn’t even know, killed another young man, and then was caught. He was put on trial and convicted. Every day, the mother of the young man he shot came to the trial and watched him. She glared at him, but never said anything.
At the end of the trial, just before they took him away to jail, the mother looked him in the eye and said, simply, “I’m going to kill you.”
After a year or so in prison, the guard told him that he had a visitor.
It was this woman, the mother of the young man he killed.
He was nervous about seeing her again, but he didn’t have any other visitors, so he agreed.
They talked for a while, and she asked him if he needed anything. She came back to see him again, every few months. He was still nervous, but a little less so each time she came. Finally, it was time for him to get out and she asked him about his plans. “I have no idea. I don’t have any family, or any job prospects.”
So, she contacted a friend of hers, and helped him get a job. Then she asked where he planned to live, and, again, he didn’t know. She offered him her spare room, and he came to stay for a while. She made sure he got up and got to work. She made sure he had enough to eat.
After a couple of months, she said, “Do you remember that day in court when you were convicted of murdering my son for no reason at all, to get into your gang, and I stood up and said, ‘I’m going to kill you?’”
“Yes,” he said. “I’ll never forget that.”
She says:
“I killed that boy.”
“I didn’t want a boy who could kill in cold blood like that to continue to exist in this world. So, I set about visiting you, bringing you presents, bringing you things, and taking care of you. And now I have let you come into my house, got you a job, and gave you a place to live…I set about changing you, and you’re not that same person anymore.
I killed that boy with love and love raised up another!
I want to know, she said, if you’d like to stay here.
I’m in need of a son, and I want to know if I can adopt you.”
He said yes and she did.
The feeling of love is never going to be enough.
It’s how we live.
It’s true at home, and equally true in the Grace Church family.
It means sacrificial giving of our time, talents, and energies to be a family of love!
We will flourish because of the gifts that grow from the work of love.
Love is the concrete acts — our choices, our work, and our will.
Love has deep patience, and determined kindness, and sees far into the future.
Love kills the old self and raises up another.
Blessings,
Rev. John Roberts