Let Me Tell You about Love
“A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion.”
Luke 10:30-33
My Dear Children,
When I was a young man, home from college for the summer, I learned a hard lesson about myself. On one particular day, I had been working all day in the hot sun and had just showered up for a night out with my friends. Just before I got to my car, my father called from across the farmyard and asked me to come over to where he was working. I did not have the best relationship with my dad at the time and I was irritated at his interruption.
As I walked to him I could see that he was standing next to a piece of equipment called a chopper rack. This is a large covered wagon that holds the fresh alfalfa, what we called green feed, after it is cut and harvested. The rack was full of feed and I wondered what he wanted.
“The apron on this rack broke,” he explained, and I can’t fix it until I unload all this green feed.”
I knew what he meant. The apron was part of a conveyor system that pushed the feed forward so it could be mechanically unloaded at the front of the wagon. If the apron was broken, the feed couldn’t move. I knew what was coming next and I dreaded it.
“Can you help me pitch the feed out by hand so I can fix the rack?”
I looked at my father. I looked at the rack and the more than 5,000 pounds of feed inside. Then I looked from the setting sun to my clean and casual going-out clothes.
“I’ve got plans with my friends tonight,” I said.
“I know you do, but I’ve been working all day and I can’t do this by myself.”
I watched the sun begin to dip below the trees and felt anger and resentment. I didn’t want to help my father. Neither did I want to be the jerk that didn’t want to help. I felt trapped between two unsatisfying choices and that made me even angrier. As was also true in those days, I wasn’t just angry about the hard choice that night, but carried into it all the bitterness and resentment I’d ever felt toward my father. This unhealed pain stung my heart like a nest of angry hornets.
After much internal wrestling, I very reluctantly decided to stay. Back in my stinky work clothes, I grabbed a pitch fork, crawled inside the hot chopper rack, and began to unload the feed. My father worked alongside me until he grew too tired. Then I took over for the night, pitching forkful after forkful of wet, heavy alfalfa. I pitched as the sweat broke across and streamed down my brow. I kept pitching as the eastern sky faded from blue to pink to dark. I was still pitching when the moon rose and the crickets began their evening courtship. When I finally finished, the night was well awake and active. My father and I were but shadows.
When my dad thanked me for helping him, I found that I was happy to do so. Something had changed during that long evening of unwanted labor. My heart, so closed and bitter at the beginning, became supple and generous by the end. The feeling was so profound, I believe, because it was so uncommon in those days. That night I began to understand just a little bit more about what love really is.
When Jesus wanted people to understand the great commandments to love God and our neighbors, he shared a particularly hard story to make his point. In the culture of his time, Jews and Samaritans not only did not like each other, they didn’t even interact with each other. For the story to involve an outpouring of kindness from a despised stranger must have been very difficult for the Jews to consider. Jesus took an important theological truth and made it personal, because learning to love as God loves is a deeply personal thing.
We have all done something helpful for those whom we love and who love us back. This is good and healthy, but as Jesus taught elsewhere, even evil men show kindness to their own children. Love for a follower of Jesus goes far beyond the ordinary. Jesus taught people to give more than asked and to not expect repayment. If your brother asks for a shirt, give him a jacket, too. If asked for help on a project, try to help out with others chores as well.
Harder still, we are called to shower love even upon those that hate and persecute us. The Apostle John wrote, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.”
These are hard words, but very important for us to hear. Real godly love is the most difficult to give, but also the most rewarding to experience. In my earlier life, I was very much like the two fellows in the parable that passed by the wounded man and left him to die. I cared first for my own needs and found very little left to give to others. Feelings of compassion and generosity toward my father especially were very rare things.
This night, however, we bonded over a hard task done well and at great personal sacrifice for us both. I wish that I had forever after shown that kind of godly love to everyone, but it wasn’t that easy or quick. The difficulty I had in helping my father that night was a sign of how selfish my heart really was. It took many more hard lessons for my heart to grow soft and loving. And, as you well know, I still struggle with this at times.
As I have watched you grow, I don’t think bitterness or anger will keep you from developing godly love for others. The greater danger for you, I believe, is busyness and distraction. Life is speeding up and many of us are already simply holding on for dear life! With the almost complete digitization of society and the “always on, right now” expectations of culture, more and more people will feel they cannot afford an interruption to their plans. You may see people in need and not believe you have the time to help. You may be doing something really fun and not want to be interrupted. You may even be doing something really important at the time of someone else’s need.
Years ago I read a sermon about the parable of the Good Samaritan by German theologian Helmut Thielicke. He wrote that if this parable was told in our day, one of the men who ignored the wounded man might have been a pastor, hurrying to his church to deliver a sermon about how we should help those in need.
That’s the funny thing about love. It demands a lot from us. More than we are usually willing to give. But I hope you also learn the other part about love and that it doesn’t take you a lifetime to do it. Love always returns far more than it ever takes from us.
Let me leave you with a quote from Thomas Merton’s No Man is an Island:
“There is a false and momentary happiness in self-satisfaction, but it always leads to sorrow because it narrows and deadens our spirit. True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and, therefore the potential happiness of such love is without limit. Infinite sharing is the law of God’s inner life.”
I see such love in you all. May it grow lovelier and bolder everyday by God’s grace and guidance.
With love always,
Papa
Questions for reflection:
1. Have you ever been asked to help with something and not wanted to do it?
1a. How did it make you feel when you were asked?
1b. Did you help willingly or with a grudge?
1c. When you were done, were you happy to help or grumpy about it?
2. When you ask others for help, how do they respond?
2a. Do they sometimes help with joy and other times with irritation?
2b. How do you feel when they help with joy and how do you feel at other times when they help you but are grumpy about it?
3. When you ask God for help with things in your thoughts or prayers, how do you think he feels about your request? Do you think he is happy to be asked or grumpy about it? Why?
4. What are some ways you can show love to others?
5. [Advanced] What are some ways you can grow in your ability to love like God?
This essay is part of a collection called Becoming Who We Are: Letters from Papa on the Christian Life.