| Things to Live For |
Chapter 3 |
Page 5 |
Another mark of wholesomeness in a life is generous love. Our affections make us what we are. The things we love tell whether we are living for earth or for heaven. We are commanded not to love the world, because the world passes away, and the things in it which are loved and sought after; but to love the things which are eternal, and then we shall endure forever. Love is all of life. All duty is included in loving God and our neighbor. Loving God is always first. Unless we love God we really do not love at all. Love that lacks the diving element, and that is not born of and inspired by God’s love in the heart, is only earthly, and will not endure – is not worth while. In the truly wholesome life there is love to God, and then a love for others born of this which is like God’s love for us.
This love is forgiving. We are taught to link together the spirit of forgiveness and the desire for forgiveness. “Forgive us, as we forgive,” we pray. This love is also generous. It is free from all miserable envying and jealousy. It rejoices in the happiness and the prosperity of others. It sees the best, not the worst, there is in the lives of other people. Instead of watching for blemishes and faults, it looks for the lively qualities. It does not find the thorn among the roses, but dies find the rose among the thorns. It is charitable, overlooking flaws and mistakes, and seeing ever the possibilities of better things. It is unselfish, forgetting its own interests in thinking of the interests of others. It is gentle, with a heart of quick and tender sympathy for sorrow or suffering, and a hand skilful and ever ready to give help when help is needed.
Margaret Fuller said that all the good she had ever done had been done by calling on every nature for its highest. Here is a secret of a wholesome life which is well worth learning. We should seek for the best and the noblest in every one we meet, and then strive to call it out. One who was asked how to cultivate this charm of character replied, “Look at everything through kindly eyes.” If we do this, there will be no more envy, no more jealousy, no more censoriousness, no more uncharitableness; having pure, generous love in our heart, we shall find in every other life something beautiful, at least something that through the kindly nourishing of our love may grow into beauty. Thus we shall really call on every nature for its best. This is a mark of supremest wholesomeness in life. It is thus that Christ’s love looks on every one of us, seeing in us the best possibilities of our being, and calling ever for the best that is in us.
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