Reading: Proverbs 30, 31
My Verse: "She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life" (Proverbs 31:12).
This last proverb has always been difficult for me, LORD God. The standard is so high, always felt I could never attain it! And yet I know it is a picture of what I am to be as a wife. I pray, LORD God, that I will daily make this my goal - "to do him good and not harm."
This truly is a beautiful thing if one can get past one's own personal ego, one's own neediness!
After all, You, LORD God are love. You love us way beyond our understanding! (John 3:16)
You love us even before we know to love You! (Romans 5:8)
C.S Lewis wrote a most wonderful book on love. He speaks of how, yes, love can be a dangerous thing, we can get hurt but, by loving - "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor."
Lewis speaks of how we cannot depend on feelings alone.
"Affection produces happiness if - and only if - there is common sense and give and take and "decency." In other words, only if something more, and other, than Affection is added. The mere feeling is not enough. You need "common sense," that is, reason. You need "give and take"; that is, you need justice, continually stimulating mere Affection when it fades and restraining it when it forgets or would defy the art of love. You need "decency." There is no disguising the fact that this means goodness; patience, self-denial, humility, and the continual intervention of a far higher sort of love than Affection, in itself, can ever be. . . . If we try to live by Affection alone, Affection will "go bad on us."
Lewis also in this same book points out an all important point on love. Yes, we are to do that person "good, and not harm." But we must do this in such a way as it is not overt. "The real work must be, of all our works, the most secret."
Dag Hammarskjold in his book Markings speaks to this most beautifully.
"When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover."
There is no question that to truly love one must die to one's self. We are unable to do this fully without help. And so Lewis states that because God is love, it is He that enables us to love. All love is Gift-love.
I like this verse. Thank You, LORD God for the gift of love and for the guidance You provide in Your Word and in the writings of believing scholars to help us along this path.
Ditat Deus - God Enriches!
My Verse: "She does him good, and not harm,
all the days of her life" (Proverbs 31:12).
This last proverb has always been difficult for me, LORD God. The standard is so high, always felt I could never attain it! And yet I know it is a picture of what I am to be as a wife. I pray, LORD God, that I will daily make this my goal - "to do him good and not harm."
This truly is a beautiful thing if one can get past one's own personal ego, one's own neediness!
After all, You, LORD God are love. You love us way beyond our understanding! (John 3:16)
You love us even before we know to love You! (Romans 5:8)
C.S Lewis wrote a most wonderful book on love. He speaks of how, yes, love can be a dangerous thing, we can get hurt but, by loving - "We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armor."
Lewis speaks of how we cannot depend on feelings alone.
"Affection produces happiness if - and only if - there is common sense and give and take and "decency." In other words, only if something more, and other, than Affection is added. The mere feeling is not enough. You need "common sense," that is, reason. You need "give and take"; that is, you need justice, continually stimulating mere Affection when it fades and restraining it when it forgets or would defy the art of love. You need "decency." There is no disguising the fact that this means goodness; patience, self-denial, humility, and the continual intervention of a far higher sort of love than Affection, in itself, can ever be. . . . If we try to live by Affection alone, Affection will "go bad on us."
Lewis also in this same book points out an all important point on love. Yes, we are to do that person "good, and not harm." But we must do this in such a way as it is not overt. "The real work must be, of all our works, the most secret."
Dag Hammarskjold in his book Markings speaks to this most beautifully.
"When you have reached the point where you no longer expect a response, you will at last be able to give in such a way that the other is able to receive, and be grateful. When Love has matured and, through a dissolution of the self into light, become a radiance, then shall the Lover be liberated from dependence upon the Beloved, and the Beloved also be made perfect by being liberated from the Lover."
There is no question that to truly love one must die to one's self. We are unable to do this fully without help. And so Lewis states that because God is love, it is He that enables us to love. All love is Gift-love.
I like this verse. Thank You, LORD God for the gift of love and for the guidance You provide in Your Word and in the writings of believing scholars to help us along this path.
Ditat Deus - God Enriches!
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