Our affection

Where is my affection that lies today? In the security of a career, the ever need of money, the warmth and love of a family or could it be the ministry of our religious pursuit that which are competing for our affection? I suppose all of it. Sometimes the lie that in pursuing something good like ministry could land us in a position that compromise our love for God himself. For where the heart is there our treasure will be also. There my heart yearns to break free of its icy prison that seems all is fading in unfamilar greyness and to be truly free to love him and fire up for action like winning the world for him. On the other hand our affection is the only thing demanded of him not our gungho and bravado actions for it is by his spirit that much is accomplished not by our own might. Could it be true that God is relentlessly in pursuit of my affection that all else is merely a distraction?

Our Final Priority (Paraphrase)

If I have the language ever so perfectly and speak like a pundit, and have not the love that grips the heart, I am nothing. If I have decorations and diplomas and am proficient in up-to-date methods and have not the touch of understanding love, I am nothing. If I am able to worst my opponents in argument so as to make fools of them, and have not the wooing note, I am nothing.

If I have all faith and great ideals and magnificent plans and wonderful visions, and have not the love that sweats and bleeds and weeps and prays and pleads, I am nothing. If I surrender all prospects, and leaving home and friends and comforts, give myself to the showy sacrifice of a missionary career, and turn sour and selfish amid the daily annoyances and personal slights of a missionary life, and though I give my body to be consumed in the heat and sweat and mildew of India, and have not the love that yields its rights, its coveted leisure, its pet plans, I am nothing, nothing. Virtue has ceased to go out of me.

If I can heal all manner of sickness and disease, but wound hearts and hurt feelings for want of love that is kind, I am nothing. If I write books and publish articles that set the world agape and fail to transcribe the word of the cross in the language of love, I am nothing. Worse, I may be competent, busy, fussy, punctilious, and well-equipped, but like the church at Laodicea—nauseating to Christ.