WITHOUT LOVE

A devotion by Steve Long
Without Love ...

If there is love in someone's heart, somehow it will come flowing through. Love is hard to disguise as is self centeredness. Either will exude and manifest itself in some way. The only way anybody can go unaffected by love is if he or she throws a shield up in resistance.

A Christian without love is like a car without an engine. It may look impressive, but it’s not going anywhere.

A Christian without love is like a piñata without any candy. You can beat it and whack it, but you’re not going to get anything out of it.

A Christian without love is like a river with no water. It may be a testimony to what once was, but it has no substance for today. Nothing can flow from it, for it only lies stale, dry, and lifeless.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.[i]

Without love, you may have linguistic fluency, but it will only sound like disorderly noise to those you are trying to reach. It is better to stutter and stammer with love in your heart than to speak with the eloquence of Cicero without it. You may mesmerize people for a while with your style of speech, but that will not endure nor endear people to yourself or God.

Without love, your pronouncements of great wisdom, though they may be true, will ring hollow in the ears of those who hear it.

Without love, your deep knowledge that you want to display for all to admire will be rejected for something far shallower that comes from someone who seems to care.

Without love, your gift of faith may move mountains but it will not move a hungry soul who longs for something genuine, someone real.

Without love, all the “charitable deeds” you’ve done will be barrenly squandered away into the wastelands of every great but unloving deed done for all the wrong reasons.

According to an article in USA Today, there is a mass in the ocean known as the “world's largest collection of ocean garbage” which:…is twice the size of Texas. ... The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles.[ii]

That’s a big pile of floating garbage that some are hoping to remedy but most are trying their best to ignore. Yet it’s not as big as the collection of good deeds that have been done without love.

Without love, “I am nothing.” That means everything I’m accomplishing is actually doing others no good.

Without love, “it profits me nothing,” which means all my deeds are actually doingme no good. It’s not helping you and it’s not helping me either.

Years ago, I heard a lady talk about one aunt who was a blessing to everyone she knew, then she mentioned another aunt. Her words were “Aunt Cindy[iii]never did do nothing for nobody.”

Someone has said:[iv]“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”

But let me add this:

Do it in love.

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.1-3
[ii] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/science/2018/03/22/great-pacific-garbage-patch-grows/446405002/
[iii] Made up name
[iv] Attributed to John Wesley but others dispute he said it.