Herein is Love: A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Love in Its Bearing on Personality, Parenthood, Teaching, and All Other Human Relationships.Howe, Reuel L.
Religion
Herein is Love: A Study of the Biblical Doctrine of Love in Its Bearing on Personality, Parenthood, Teaching, and All Other Human Relationships.
Howe, Reuel L.
Love -- Religious aspects -- Christianity
Mutual trust is a third necessary quality in human life. As we saw
earlier, nothing can happen in any relationship where there is not
trust, and yet, lack of trust is everywhere prevalent. The great
question is: How can we trust when we have such strong feelings of
mistrust not only of persons, but also of the process of life? I have
often had these misgivings as a teacher when, beginning with new
students, I wondered how we could go through the crises of learning
again. Where would I find the strength and courage for the challenges?
Would they respond to their opportunities and resources? Parents have
the same questions when they think of their children and wonder if,
after all the years of care, they will turn out all right. Sometimes we
become overwhelmed at the sheer weight and endlessness of our
responsibilities, and in those moments we become profoundly
discouraged. The need of love is desperate, and we feel wholly unequal
to meeting that need. How wonderful it would be if we could have more
confidence in ourselves and in others, and likewise in the processes of
life to which we must commit ourselves. The answer to this longing is in
the old, but ever new, affirmation that those who have faith in God can
have faith in man and in the relationships of life.
As we read Paul's epistles to the Corinthians, we may notice that he
seems to have been more confident of them than they were of themselves.
Yet, his confidence in them was not so much in them as it was in the
Holy Spirit. Because of the Spirit, he had reason to have confidence in
what the Spirit would do among, in, and through them. Along this same
line, a teacher made the following comment about his experience in one
of his classes: "On one occasion I was suffering from some agenda
anxieties, afraid that the members of the class, in the course of their
discussion, would not arrive at some important and necessary insights. I
was tempted to make sure that they saw certain things in the subject
that I felt they ought to see, but fortunately I was restrained from
interfering. Instead, I had an exciting morning hearing all the things
that I wanted to say said by them. It was a great experience! This
illustrates how important it is for us to keep ourselves from meddling,
and to have confidence in the Spirit. Then the truth appears in the
midst of us much more powerfully than if we handed it out, because when
it appears out of the midst, it comes with authority, it comes with
depth, it is memorable. The truth that comes to us in this way makes us
free. The moral is obvious: Let us trust what God is trying to
accomplish in us, and therefore trust one another."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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