Hope

“It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
1 Co 13:7

“My son doesn’t seem to care about anything and is so unappreciative to those who try to help him,” a gentleman said to me during lunch after our church service. His son is thirty-one years old, yet doesn’t seem to know how to take care of himself and is relying on his parents for support. “He has no job and is not looking for one,” the man added.

“Don’t lose hope,” I said to him, trying to console him by quoting the verse I have cited for this devotional. “Being able to love is a privilege and, as long as we continue to love, there is still hope,” I continued, trying to say something positive to him.

“Well, I have got to go,” the man seemed to be anxious to leave before our conversation ended, and what I had to say didn’t seem to be making any impact. I think he was feeling quite hopeless about the whole thing, and had very little desire to elaborate any further on his son’s situation.

How can we hold onto hope when there seems very little to be hopeful for? There are so many occasions in life when we are tempted to give up all hope and to lead our lives in utter despair.

Nothing is more cruel and final than death, yet in Jesus we do have hope since he rose again from the dead and those of us who follow Jesus have the same hope as well. Unless there is the hope of resurrection, hope will die with us all and will not outlast our earthly days.

“We still have hope,” I said to a middle aged man who was about to lose his wife to a terminal illness. I drew a blank stare from him, because, even though he was a Christian, the idea of resurrection had yet to sink into his heart and, in the face of death, he appeared to be quite hopeless.

Who has the courage to love if there is no resurrection? I ponder. If love is only confined to this world and nothing more, lovers are the most to be pitied since the more they love, the deeper their hearts will hurt when their beloveds are no more. Take hope away from love, love becomes the cruelest thing in the world. It may bring us joy, but it pales compared to the pain it may generate in the process of acquiring, maintaining, and losing the beloved.

Our flowering quince bush looks pretty dead in the dead of winter, but when the weather gets slightly warmer, it begins to bud. It may appear to be dead, but the hope of life is still flowing freely in the dry branches and, when the time comes, it blooms like a burning bush, revealing the presence of life and hope and, from its glorious blossoms, we may also see the face of God.

Protection

“It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
1 Co 13:7

Truth does hurt. Should we therefore keep it from our loved ones to avoid hurting them? “A truthful word is unpleasant to the ears; good medicine is bitter to the taste.” Truth always brings healing, yet we sometimes are afraid to apply it to our loved ones for fear of hurting them.

A lover’s instinct is to protect and to shield their beloved from sorrow and pain. This is quite a natural thing to do, but knowing when to do so takes great wisdom. We may actually hurt our beloved in the name of protecting them.

My heart was filled with apprehension when Michael told me that he had decided to hike the Appalachian Trail by himself during the break between medical school graduation and residency. My fatherly instinct was to keep him from going, but knowing how stubborn he was, I suggested that I take the trip with him. Fortunately he turned me down, because the protector might easily have turned into a liability for him. I wanted to be protective of my son, but I may be the one who needs to be protected from the onslaught of my own fear.

Fear of loss causes us to become fearless protectors. Being protective of our beloved is a plausible thing, but it is still a form of self-love. We protect our beloved to protect ourselves from suffering the pain of loss. Protection should be done for our beloved’s sake, not for our own sake. Being a grownup, Michael should be able to make his own decisions without his father’s interference. In fact, what I was trying to avoid was the anxiety that I would have to suffer during the time of his hiking trip. I was in fact trying to protect myself in the name of love.

Letting go may just be the best thing we can do to protect our children. The tighter we hold onto them, the weaker they will become and, if we continue to do so, we may greatly lessen their ability to protect themselves and they will be afflicted with insecurity and fear their entire life. Projecting our fear onto our children by being fearful is one the worst things we do to our children, yet many of us do it routinely.

My friend Bill was a fearless man and the way he raised his children was pretty fearless. As far as I know, his two children turned out to be well-rounded persons and one of them is a West Point graduate. Bill was many things I wanted to be and was unable to achieve, for I was a fearful man as far as childrearing was concerned.

Let us be protective of our beloved at all times, but we have to realize that protection often means more of letting go than holding onto our beloved.

Self-seeking

“It is not rude, it is not self-seeking…”
1 Co 13:5

True love is not self-seeking, it’s seeking of others; it’s not self-oriented, it is centered on others.

“I have been seeking a soul-mate in the sea of humanity, I will be fortunate to find one; it’s my destiny if I don’t,” wrote Hsu, the pioneer modern Chinese free verse. He did find a soul-mate in a divorced singer and actress, but the controversial marriage didn’t last all that long and the talented poet died in a fiery airplane crash at a very young age.

I often wonder whether he found true fulfillment in his relationship with his lover or not. What this man left behind were a few good lines and a tragic love story and nothing more. Although he pursued his ideal love with great intensity, it was merely an act of self-seeking for the most part. In the process of seeking his true love, he was in fact seeking fulfillment for himself.

What I tried so hard to find in my love were the things that I was severely lacking. I wanted to look for the attribute of intelligence, which I seemed to value more than any others, in a girl to make up for my deficiency. I thought I was seeking for true romance, but that wasn’t the case at all. My search for love in my youth was in reality self-seeking.

We become disillusioned when we fail to locate the things we look for from our significant others and the disillusionment inevitably leads to a messy break up. It’s unfortunate that so many people end their lives without finding the ones who can bring them true fulfillment and quench their thirst for love. Things would have been entirely different had they changed their mindset a little bit and started to focus their attention on others in their pursuit of romance. Had they done so, they would have found themselves on their journey of finding others, for the essence of love is giving, not receiving. “It’s more blessed to give than to receive” does not apply to monetary giving only; it is equally applicable as far as romantic love is concerned.

How do we seek others in our livelong journey of learning how to love?

The life of the woman at the well was obviously unfulfilled even though she had gone through five different men, for she was merely seeking the realization of her own aspirations and dreams in all the men with she had been. Her life would have been more complete had she tried to meet the needs of others. Why do half of the marriages end in divorces nowadays? There is a simple answer to this: the plague of self-seeking. We claim to fall in love with our loved ones, but it’s really self-love in disguise.

Pride

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
1 Co 13:4

Why do some men seek “trophy wives?” The answer is simple. They desire to have reputable wives to match their positions or to boost their status in society. Dragons should always seek their mates among phoenixes, we Chinese believe. Pride seems to play a vital role in our pursuit of romance.

“Will you still love your children if they are not good athletes?” I asked Michael, who seemed to consider athletic ability premier in his future children. I don’t think he knew what he was talking about since he wasn’t even dating anyone, but there seemed to be an element of pride in his supposed love for his offspring who were yet to surface.

Do we love because the objects of our love are worthy of our adoration, either by their innate attributes or their superb performances in whatever they do? For this reason most of us strive to achieve renown to measure up to our loved ones’ lofty expectations and to make them proud of us.

Love can easily be contaminated by the vice of pride.

This may not be theologically sound, but I often feel that God loves me more if he is pleased with my performance as a Christian, and he will care for me a lot less if I stumble and fall. This appears to be a projection of the notion of human affection into divine love and makes both equally imperfect. I believe the opposite of this idea may be a little more valid. God may leave us alone for a brief moment to enjoy the euphoria of our narcissistic self-importance when we are pleased with ourselves for whatever reason; but he may pour his abundant love on us when we fall flat on the ground. There is not the slightest taint of pride in God’s love for his children and he doesn’t have to be proud of us to love us.

Pride makes it very difficult for us to love the unlovable, to care for the undesirable, and to adore the deplorable, for to love is an act of identification. Our fear is we may become less desirable by loving the undesirable, less lovable by loving the unlovable. All human love is partially self-love, and there is always a trace of arrogance in it. We are who we love, therefore being prideful is inevitable in the process of loving since we all have a certain sense of pride within our hearts.

Peter found himself denying his Master before a servant girl because he was overcome by fear and shame at the moment. His pride in himself had kept him from identifying with Jesus and it was also his pride that made him weep bitterly afterward. His love for the Lord was by no means perfect, which was actually the way most of us love. We do need God’s help to love right. Even our noblest acts are in need of purification by the blood of Christ to make them acceptable before the throne.

Boastfulness

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
1 Co 13:4

“It was good that you felt free to share with the congregation your feelings toward your wife. Most Chinese men don’t do that,” a lady said to me after church. I don’t remember saying anything from the pulpit except mentioning that it was our 29th wedding anniversary. In fact, I was a little embarrassed to even mention that to the people since I believe private matters should be kept private. Don’t we all feel at little awkward when we witness PDA of any sort?

Public displays of affection among lovers are in fact a form of boastfulness, which often causes people to feel uncomfortable. Why do couples even feel the urge to tell the entire world how much they love each other by their overt displays of affection? Couples who parade their love before the watching world often end up in separation or divorce. The fairy tale wedding picture of Princess Di and her prince has forever been etched in millions of people’s minds, yet we all know how the marriage ended. It was just a resounding gong and a clanging cymbal that created a noisy scene of artificial romance that evaporated a lot sooner that we had expected.

Boastful romances aren’t always that long lasting. True love doesn’t usually make a scene or a declaration and its existence absolutely needs no validation and its being requires no proof of any kind. Romantic love is the only sort of love that needs various tokens to sustain its fragile existence and vows and sweet talk to vouchsafe its survival. Only the people who are insecure about their love find it necessary to speak incessantly about their love. We don’t usually boast about our parents’ love for us or how much we love our children, do we?

I do boast about my love for my wife, not so much to outsiders but to Kathy herself. I have become more and more boastful about what I am doing for her lately, which may be a direct violation of the apostle’s teaching. I speak about what household chores I do, as if they weren’t really my jobs. By doing those things I really am trying to do my wife a favor, not knowing that the expression of love should never be overly expressive or boastful. I was merely doing myself a favor by doing her a favor, since genuine expressions of love does have an absolute certainty of reciprocation.

My marriage may be in trouble if I feel the need to tell people that it is a happy one. Boastfulness is, in essence, a form of covering up the areas in which we feel insecure and insufficient. The expression and receiving of romantic love should always be as natural and spontaneous as trees budding and flowers blooming in the springtime. It does not call attention to itself, yet it commends all attention by its sheer disinterestedness

Envy

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
1 Co 13:4

Romantic love is possessive by nature; therefore the relationship is always one to one, not one to many or many to one. There was perfect reason in the Lord creating for Adam only one woman. Does this mean that erotic love is envious in essence?

One of the most esteemed wives in the history of Chinese literature was Yin Liang who once spotted a beautiful woman and suggested that her husband take her as a concubine. This may sound repulsive to many people, but it was actually considered a virtuous act and lauded by many men.

To love is to have the best interest of the one whom we love at heart, and bringing a third party into the marriage surely isn’t in anybody’s interest. Sarah created a long lasting family feud by introducing Hagar into the family. Her love for her Abraham might not have been envious, but it was possessive just the same, since her goal was self-serving.

Envy is something that guards the sanctity of marriage and keeps it from the intrusion of bad elements. If this is the case, can we then assume that it is necessary for the survival of marriage love? If so, romantic love ceases to exist if envy isn’t present. Shared love isn’t romantic love at all.

Love does not envy, but since the vice of jealousy is forever present within romantic love, can we therefore conclude that romantic love isn’t pure love since it is contaminated by envy?

It’s really a modern phenomenon that people of our age are so obsessive about erotic love. This wasn’t really so in the days of old. The ancients seemed to value friendship, which was commonly considered more of a disinterested and honorable love, more than they treasured romance. Romance seemed to have been taken for granted, but friendship was pursued with great passion.

Procreation is one of the main purposes of marriage, and couples who are not passionately in love can still produce perfect children together. This seems to render romantic love unnecessary, doesn’t it? Over thousands of years, most marriages have been matched by matchmaking, yet they appear to have worked out just fine, finer than most marriages of our time.

Romantic love is overrated and perhaps it’s about time to put it in a place where it truly belongs. It’s a kind of possessive love and the Lord Jesus made it clear that he will render it unnecessary when we get to heaven. “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage,” stated the Lord. Shouldn’t we give heed to his word and not place romantic love on a pedestal and idolize it as if it were the most precious thing in the world?

Kindness

“Love is patient, love is kind…”
1 Co 13:4

Love is to be enjoyed, not to be endured; yet it’s hard for us to appreciate the pleasure of love if we have to suffer through it all. Patience and kindness don’t usually go hand in hand. Love suffers long, but not usually with kindness.

Out of our commitment to God and faithfulness to our marriage vows, we may remain in the marriage with our countenance downcast and temper short. We may suffer long within the relationship, but our kindness toward our partner may be in short supply.

Love is patient, love is kind…”

Kindness is what makes love sufferable; and love is what makes kindness possible. These two must complement each other to make a love relationship enjoyable. When the feeling of love is absent, kindness must be present to make the love relationship long lasting. When youthful passion is strong, lovers can treat each other passionately; when it is not, at least they can deal with each other kindly and thoughtfully. Powerful emotion isn’t self-sustaining and it must come down from the peak; kindness is something that keeps the flame of love burning in the valley.

Lovers should be friends also, and friends tend to treat one another with kindness.

“Husband and wife in youth, companions in old age (少年夫妻老來伴,)” goes a Chinese saying. When the flame of passionate love dies down, friendship between husband and wife is the oil that keeps the fire of love smoldering. By this time love is less of the body and more of the soul, less of the physical and more of the spiritual.

A little bit of kindness goes a long way in a love relationship.

We may think courtesy and respect are no longer needed within a marriage relationship, since physical and emotional barriers between the two have been swept away by romantic love and the couple are encircled or entrapped by a ring. The key to a happy marriage, which I have heard often among Chinese people, is for couples to respect each other as if they were guests (相敬如賓.) Don’t we Chinese people always shower our guests with great kindness and esteem no matter who they are? I believe our marriages will become much more tolerable and enjoyable if couples learn to treat each other that way. It seems reasonable that we should treat our lovers with even greater respect than we show toward our guests, doesn’t it?

I believe Paul placed the attribute of kindness behind patience strategically in his discourse on the essence of love, for one can hardly love rightly apart from both of them. May we never forget to always show kindness to our loved ones to make them feel comfortable and secure within a loving relationship.

Patience

“Love is patient…”
1 Co 13:4

Love is the point where eternity and time make a connection; it is the precious thing that gives meaning to time and makes it stretch into timelessness. All things instant are confined in time and will vanish with time. Love is patient because it is eternal, which is the only thing on earth worth keeping. The thing that is worth keeping does take great patience to keep. If we consider love valuable, we will devote time and energy to its upkeep.

“Love is patient…”

We seem to spend a lot of time and energy earning what we can’t keep and taking the things that we can’t lose for granted. “I need to work hard to advance my career and make a good living and, as far as my wife and children are concerned, well, they will always be there.” This is true to many people.

We seem to have a great deal of patience working on a project or pursuing a deal, but we appear to have a short fuse in dealing with our loved ones. We always treat our guests with courtesy and are quite impolite to the ones in our own household. We may build a great career in the end, but end up losing the ones we love.

What’s truly worthwhile is worth cultivating. We will leave all things behind except love and we will take nothing with us but love at our death. How much time and energy do we spend daily in building up love with our loved ones? Very little indeed.

“What is there to cultivate?” you ask.

“We see, but we don’t perceive.” I heard this from a radio program. Love seems to be so abundant; therefore it becomes less valuable. Is this so? Can we deem oxygen and water less valuable because they are so abundant? Love is vital to our existence and a total necessity to our well-being. Shouldn’t we invest our intelligence, time, and energy cultivating and developing it?

“We are just an old married couple,” somebody said to me when I encouraged him to put more time into nurturing his love for his wife. Love waxes cold within a marriage not by nature, but by negligence. Gold shines just as bright even if it ages, but it may rust for lack of polishing. People are bored by love for lack of true understanding and appreciation of love. God is love. Will we ever be bored by God? If so, heaven will be a very boring place and eternity will indeed be giant slum of boredom and disappointment.

Love is patient because it is timeless. I may not be able to bring it to complete fruition, but I can always wait; I may never be able to make it perfect, but I can continue to work on it even when I am no more. May we all be patient in cultivating love, for the best is yet to come.

Long time no see

What makes people insane is reason, and what keep us sane is art and poetry. I stole this idea from G.K. Chesterton, who I consider one of the most intelligent people of the previous century. Even the great C.S. Lewis borrowed some ideas from this man who was built like an “upside down P.” This genus will continue to speak to us for years to come. Make sure you read his “Orthodoxy.”

Well, I just want to keep in touch and let you guys know I am still here, trying hard not to grow old and not to grow up. I have been attempting to stalk my sons as usual, but things have been pretty quiet and there is nothing exciting to be discovered. Guess it’s about time to find a new hobby.

I just published a book of poem entitled “ Living Sacrifice - Voices from the Ashes.” I will give a copy to those who are interested and, more importantly, are able to read Chinese.

Anyway, just to say hi and come back to the blog to meet this old and unwise guru. You may learn a thing or two.