Month: June 2024

“Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant.”

1 Corinthians 13:4 (Common English Bible)

It is reported that Abraham Lincoln once made a speech before a huge audience and was greeted with loud and long applause. As he was leaving the podium, a man said, “That was a great speech Mr. President; listen to how they enjoyed what you said!” Lincoln, in his usual self-deprecating manner, responded, “I am kept humble by the fact that the crowd would be twice as large if I were to be hanged.”[1] Always modest, never vaulting himself or puffed up, Abraham Lincoln cared little for his own reputation. He did not need to. His love for his country and his desire for useful service characterized by empathy, humility, and respect for opposing opinions made him as large as the monument erected in his honor in Washington, D.C.

“Love,” the apostle Paul writes, doesn’t brag, nor is it arrogant. These two qualities of love are closely related to each other. “Doesn’t brag” refers to outward conduct and behavior; “isn’t arrogant” refers to an inward disposition. Together they characterize someone who is modest, ready to stoop to serve. We think again of Jesus on that dark night that he was betrayed. On their way to the Upper Room, the disciples disputed as to whom of them was the greatest. Each of them presented arguments for their own claim to the highest honor. The result was that when they arrived in the Upper Room and took their seats, not one of them would stoop to the humble service of foot washing. So, Jesus rose from the table, took a towel and a basin, and began to wash the disciple’s feet.

The church in Corinth is experiencing quarrelsome behavior that is dividing the faith community. Various members are elevating themselves, declaring possession of the greater spiritual gifts. The one who has the gift of tongues believed they exercised a gift beyond compare, especially over the more plain and practical gift of prophecy. The same manner of boasting and argument infused the discourse over any number of spiritual gifts. Rather than placing each gift at the disposal of the community, to bless and build, competitiveness became the order of the day. The result of all the boasting was friction and strife. The cure for all that, writes the apostle Paul, is love—a love that has no mark of brag, or swank, or swagger. Genuine love, love that builds the community of faith is modest.

Love never seeks to assert its superiority. The love that Paul desires for the Corinthian Church is one that serves, seeking the welfare of others. That love takes no notice of the worthiness of another. Nor does it seek acknowledgment. Only one concern is present—to serve another in a manner that eases the strain and burden of life. It is a love that is captured by the belief that God continues to be at work in the lives of individuals, reconciling them to God and changing them into something so much more than they presently are. As this demonstration of love takes possession of our souls, what is ugly, bitter, and broken in our lives is diminished. What increases in our hearts is patience and love that knows no jealousy and celebrates the gladness of another.

Joy,

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[1] Cobb, “Real Life, Real People”, 108.

Rev. Susan Sparks wrote the following meditation to be featured in Dr. Doug Hood’s upcoming book, A Month of Prayer and Gratitude: Five Minute Meditations for a Deeper Experience of Gratitude.

As a minister, you love everyone in your congregation. However, if you’re honest, you have to admit that there are certain people you are especially happy to see. For me, that was Sarah Goodson. Raised during the Depression on a share-cropper’s farm in the South Carolina low country, Sarah loved two things in this life more than anything: her family and taking care of people. She moved to New York City in the 1940s to give her family a better life and became a nurse to care for others. She made those two things a priority in every part of her life—down to what she carried in her purse.

I always loved to see Sarah coming into church with her big ole pocketbook because I knew what was in it. After each service during coffee hour, she would open her overstuffed bag and pull out the newest photos of her grandkids (not individual photos, but the old school kind where you flip open the book and the photos unfold in zig-zag plastic holders all the way to the floor). Then, as the picture albums were being passed around, little Ziploc bags and Tupperware containers would magically emerge from that purse—bags full of fried chicken, collard greens, shrimp and okra gumbo, oxtail stew, hot corn muffins with blueberries, and, of course, peanut butter pie. One time I asked Sarah how she got all that stuff in her purse, and she told me about a gratitude ritual she performed every Saturday night. She would sit at her kitchen table, remove all the extra, heavy junk in her bag that she had collected during the week, then fill it back up with the important things for which she was grateful: photos of her grandkids and food to feed her church. It was a simple thing: cleaning out her purse. Yet it had such an impact, including the smiles on people’s faces as they looked at the photos of the grandchildren and the comfort felt by all who ate that delicious food.

Perhaps we follow Sarah’s lead and do a little Saturday night purse cleaning of our own hearts. Let’s start with this question: What emotional baggage are you carrying today that you should unload? Everyone’s answer is probably different. I’m going to pick one that I bet most of us carry: worry. Easy to do, fixes nothing. Rev. Joyce Myers once said, “Worry is like a rocking chair—it’s always in motion, but it never gets you anywhere.” Worry can take over our lives, crowd out all things that matter, even make us sick. But we have an alternative. We can clean out the purse of our heart and hand our worries over to a greater power. Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy leads, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). Bottom line: worry or believe. You can’t do both. Which leads to my next question: What will you put in the place of worry? What is important to you? For what purpose are you here? I suggest that we follow Sarah’s lead in this, too. When I had the great honor of performing Sarah’s funeral after she passed away, the message that people shared over and over was that she had brought them joy and made them feel loved. Is there any greater legacy?

This week, do a Saturday night purse cleaning in your life. Identify the things that are weighing you down emotionally, physically, or spiritually and clean them out. Then, refocus on the things that matter. Spend time with your family. Share photographs that make people smile. Stuff a Ziploc bag of yummy food in your purse or pocket and share it with others. Bring a little love and joy to this hungry world. And do it today. As Sarah would say, “Life is too hard and too short to carry things that just don’t matter.”

Joy,

The following meditation was written by Dr. Doug Hood’s son, Nathanael Hood, M.Div.

Once in a priory in Paris, there lived a monk. A clumsy but well-meaning fellow, he’d left behind the secular world in his twenties to join the Carmelites, a Catholic order devoted to poverty and prayer. His life before the order had been a difficult one—born an impoverished peasant, he’d fought as a soldier in the cataclysmic Thirty Years’ War which decimated central Europe in the early seventeenth century. He saw much fighting, was once almost hanged by enemy troops, and was left lame by his injuries. Unable to remain a soldier, he began his new life of prayer and contemplation in 1640, taking the religious name “Lawrence of the Resurrection.” Brother Lawrence’s first ten years as a monk were difficult ones which saw him battling feelings of guilt and unworthiness. But as the years crept by, he eventually surrendered himself to God’s mercy and became a model monk. He spent most of his life quietly toiling away in the priory’s kitchen, a job he initially disliked, only switching to a less strenuous one after one of his lame legs became ulcerated.1

Brother Lawrence died at the age of 80 in 1691 after a lifetime of service, but unlike most monks and nuns who live and die in historical anonymity, we remember his name and deeds over three centuries later. A collection of his letters and sayings were gathered together after his death by a cleric named Abbé Joseph de Beaufort and published as The Practice of the Presence of God, a remarkable little book that’s been published in countless editions in several languages. The book is suffused with the insight and wisdom of a man whose “principle endeavor [was] to stay as close as possible to God, doing, saying, and thinking nothing that might displease Him.”2 Indeed, it could be said he was a man who loved, worshiped, and prayed as a child.

But what does this mean, to love, pray, and worship as a child? For an answer we turn to the eighteenth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus’ disciples come to Jesus with a question: who among them would be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Jesus’ answer took everyone by surprise, explaining that the greatest among them would be those who were most like a child. Part of the shock of Jesus’ answer came from the lowly status children had in ancient Israel, but much of it came from the idea that adults should mimic children! Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Children are loud, emotional, demanding, and often smelly! How could children possibly be a model of faith and piety? For that, I would answer that anyone who has spent a good amount of time among children know that they don’t do things by half-measures. They love mightily, hate bitterly, feel deeply. To be like a child is to surrender oneself entirely and wholeheartedly.

The great preacher and writer Harry Emerson Fosdick once wrote that “to pray to God as though he were Santa Claus is childish; but a man may still be childlike in his faith and range up into another sort of praying.”3 Put simply, to pray selflessly is childlike; to pray selfishly is childish. God wants us to offer up our earnest needs and desires in prayer, yes, but it should be accompanied by our total surrender to the Almighty. Just as a child rushes into a parent’s arms, so must we rush into our Heavenly Father’s arms when we pray. Consider Brother Lawrence. He could have done nothing but pray for healing in his legs or a better job outside the hustle and bustle of the kitchen—but that would have been praying selfishly. Instead, he prayed to know God in his every waking moment, both at rest and at work, in his strength and in his weakness. May it be so for all of us every day.

Joy,

1Miller, Patricia. “Introduction.” Introduction. In Walking with the Father: Wisdom from Brother Lawrence. Ijamsville, MD: The Word Among Us Press, 1999, 7-11.

2Brother Lawrence. The Practice of the Presence of God. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1982, 28.