The Supreme Gift (2 page)

What a relief, and purchased with just one coin! It’s cheap for us and solves the beggar’s problem.

However, if we really loved that poor man, we would do far more for him.

Or perhaps less. We would not toss him a coin and, who knows, our guilty feelings might arouse real Love in us.

P
aul then compares Love with sacrifice and martyrdom. And I say to those who hope one day to work for the good of humanity:
If I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Nothing!

You cannot give anything more important than the Love reflected in your own life. That is the one true universal language, which allows us to speak Chinese or the dialects of India. For if, one day, you go to those places, the silent eloquence of Love will mean that you will be understood by everyone.

A man’s message of Faith lies in the way he lives his life and not in the words he says.

Not long ago, I was in the heart of Africa, near the Great Lakes. There I met men and women who remembered with affection the one white man they had encountered: David Livingstone. And while I followed his footsteps through the Dark Continent, people’s faces lit up as they told me about the doctor who had passed through there some three years before. They could not understand what Livingstone said to them, but they felt the Love that was there in his heart.

Take that same Love with you and the work you do will be fully justified.

When you speak about God and the world of the spirit, there can be no more eloquent subject. There is no point in talking about miracles, witnesses of Faith, fine prayers. If you do all that but have not Love, all your efforts will be in vain.

You may accomplish everything you set out to accomplish and be prepared to make any sacrifice, but if you give your body to be burned and have not Love, you will have achieved nothing for yourself or for God’s cause.

A
fter comparing Love with all those things, Paul – in three short verses – gives an amazing analysis of that Greatest of Gifts.

He tells us that Love is made up of many things.

Like light. We learn at school that if we pick up a prism and allow a ray of light to pass through it, that ray will divide up into seven colours.

The colours of the rainbow.

Then Paul takes Love and allows it to pass through the prism of his intellect, dividing it up into its various elements.

He shows us the rainbow of Love, just as a prism reveals to us the rainbow colours of light.

And what are those elements? They are virtues we hear about every day and that we can practise at every moment in our lives.

It is these small things, these simple virtues, that make up the Supreme Gift of Love.

L
ove is made up of nine ingredients:

Patience:
Love is patient…

Kindness:
…and kind.

Generosity:
Love does not envy…

Humility:
…or boast; it is not arrogant..
.

Courtesy:
…or rude.

Unselfishness:
It does not insist on its own way
.

Good temper:
It is not irritable… or resentful
.

Guilelessness:
or resentful.

Sincerity:
It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth
.

Patience. Kindness. Generosity. Humility. Courtesy. Unselfishness. Good temper. Guilelessness. Sincerity. All these things make up the Supreme Gift, and are there in the soul of whoever wishes to be in the world and close to God.

All these gifts are to do with us, with our daily lives, with today and tomorrow, not with eternity.

We hear a lot about loving God.

But Christ talks to us about loving our fellow man.

We seek peace in Heaven.

Christ seeks peace on Earth.

Our human search for the answer to our main question - What should I do with my life? - is not some strange thing imposed on us from outside.

It is to be found in all civilisations, because it was born along with mankind and is evidence of the breath of the Eternal Spirit in the world.

The Supreme Gift reflects that breath. It is not just a Gift in itself, but the words and acts that make up the sum of every ordinary day.

* * *

L
ove is
patience
.

That is how Love normally behaves: it waits calmly, unhurriedly, knowing that at some point, it will show itself.

Love is ready to do its work at the right moment, but it waits calmly and meekly.

Love is patient. It can bear all things.

It believes all things.

It hopes for all things.

Because Love understands.

* * *

Kindness
. Active love.

Have you ever noticed how much of Christ’s time in the world was spent doing kind deeds, how
large a part of his short time on Earth was spent merely making other people happy.

If you view his life in that way, you will notice that although Christ had much to do, he never forgot to be kind to his fellow man.

There is only one thing greater than happiness, and that is holiness. That may not be within our grasp, but making other people happy is. God gave us that ability and it costs us almost nothing. When you think about it, you will see that it costs us absolutely nothing.

So why are we so reluctant to make our fellow man happy? Happiness does not breed in captivity nor does it diminish when it is given away. On the contrary, merely by sowing happiness, we increase our quota. Someone once said: ‘The greatest thing a man can do for his Heavenly Father is to be kind to some of His other children.’

The world really needs that!

And it’s so easy to be kind. The effect is immediate and you will be remembered for ever.

And the reward is abundant, for no debt is more honoured than the debt of Love. ‘Love never ends.’

* * *

Love is the true energy of life. As Browning says:

For life, with all it yields of joy and woe.

And hope and fear — …

Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love,

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is…

* * *

Where Love is, so are we, and so is God.

Anyone who takes joy in Love, takes joy in their existence as a human being, takes joy in God.

God is Love. Therefore
LOVE
!

Without distinction, without calculation, without procrastination, without fear that you might suffer:
LOVE
!

Lavish your Love on the poor, which is easy, and on the rich, who distrust everyone and cannot recognise the Love they need so much; and on your equals, which is very difficult. It is with our equals that we are at our most selfish. We often
try to please
, but what we need to do is to
give pleasure
.

Give pleasure. Never miss an opportunity to give pleasure, because you will be the first to benefit from that – even if no one knows what you are doing. The world around you will become more contented and things will be easier for you. As Stephen Grellet wrote: ‘I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.’

* * *

Generosity
:
‘Love does not envy.’
Envy means love in competition with the Love of others.

Let others love. And try to love still more.

Do your part, do your best.

Whenever you want to do a good deed, you will find other people doing the same thing, sometimes much better than you. Do not envy them.

Envy is directed at those in the same line of work as ourselves, and is generally intent on destroying what is best in them. It is the most despicable of all human feelings.

Envy is always waiting to destroy everything that other people do, even if they do it better than we do.

And the only way to escape envy is to focus all your energies on Love.

Instead of envying, we should admire the large, rich, generous soul that does not envy.

* * *

And having learned all that, we must learn something else:
humility
. Place a seal on your lips and forget your patience, your kindness, your generosity. Once Love has entered your life and done its beautiful work, sit quietly and say nothing about it.

Love hides even from itself.

Love avoids even self-satisfaction.

Love does not boast; it is not arrogant.

* * *

The fifth ingredient is something that might seem strange and pointless in this rainbow of Love:
courtesy
. This is Love among people, Love in society. A lot of people say that courtesy is a superfluous feeling.

Not true. Courtesy is Love in little things.

‘Love is not rude.’ You might be the shyest person in the world, the least well prepared for dealing with others, but if you have a reservoir of Love in your heart, you will always behave correctly.

Carlyle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman poet, because he loved everything – the mouse, the daisy, and all God’s creatures great and small. This meant that Burns could speak to anyone, and visit courts and palaces from his own modest little cottage.

Do you know the meaning of the word ‘gentleman’? It means someone who does things gently. That is the whole art and mystery of Love.

Someone who has Love in his heart cannot act in an ungentlemanly manner, whereas the false gentleman, who is merely a snob, is a prisoner of his feelings and cannot love.

‘Love is not rude.’

* * *

Unselfishness
. ‘Love does not insist on its own way.’

Love does not even seek what is hers by right.

In England, as in many other countries, men struggle – and justly so – for their rights. But there are certain moments when we can give up those rights.

Paul, however, does not demand this of us, because he knows that Love is something so profound that no one who loves does so thinking of a reward.

One loves because Love is the Greatest Gift, not because it gives us something in return.

It isn’t hard to give up our rights; after all, they are outside us, bound up in our relationship with society. What is hard is to give up ourselves. It is still harder to seek nothing for ourselves at all.

Generally speaking, in seeking, buying, winning and deserving those things, we have had the best of them already, and we can, in a noble gesture, forego any reward. But I am talking about not seeking at all.

Id opus est
. That is the task. Love is sufficient unto itself.

‘And do you seek great things for yourself?’ asks the prophet. ‘Seek them not.’ Why? Because there is no greatness in things. Things cannot be great. The only greatness is unselfish Love.

I know that it is hard to give up a reward, but it is much harder to seek no reward at all.

No, I shouldn’t say that. Nothing is too difficult for Love. I believe that the burden of Love is light. The ‘burden’ is merely Love’s way of living. And I am sure that it is also the easiest way to live, because the Love that seeks no reward can fill every minute of existence with its light.

The lesson to be found in all spiritual teachings is that there is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving.

I repeat:
There is no happiness in having and getting, only in giving.

Almost everyone nowadays is on the wrong track in their pursuit of happiness. They think a great deal about having and receiving, about outward show and success and being served by others. That is what most people call fulfillment.

True fulfillment, though, lies in giving and serving. ‘Whoever would be first among you,’ said Christ, ‘must be the slave of all.’ He that would be happy should place Love above all else in life. Nothing else matters.

* * *

The next ingredient is
good temper
. Love ‘is not provoked’.

We are inclined to view bad temper as a family failing, a personality trait, a matter of temperament, when we should really see it as a character defect. That is why, in his analysis of Love, Paul makes a point of mentioning good temper. And there are many other Biblical passages that cite bad temper as the most destructive element in human nature.

What surprises me is that bad temper is often there in the lives of people who consider themselves to be virtuous, and can be a great blot on an otherwise noble, gentle nature. We know a lot of people who are almost perfect, but then, suddenly, they decide that they are right about something and lose their temper.

The supposed compatibility of virtue and bad temper is one of the saddest problems afflicting humanity and society.

There are, in fact, two kinds of sin: sins of the body and sins of the disposition. In a parable in the New Testament, the Prodigal Son abandons his family and goes off into the world, while the elder brother stays with the father. After many misfortunes, the Prodigal Son decides to return, and the father gives a great party in his honour. When the brother finds out, he angrily asks his father: ‘Did I not stay here by your side all this time, working, while he was squandering his inheritance?’