"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I love that quote. I used it in an email today, and then one of my life-long friends posted it. I am convinced that was a prompt to dig a little deeper.
It is not MLK's most famous quote, but it is one of my personal favorites. Hate is exhausting. Someone once said that carrying unforgiveness is like giving someone "free rent" in your head. I know that is true. Hate and anger are exhausting. A heavy spirit is harder to bear than physical weight, but both will wear us down. We are blessed to have choices when it comes to what we do with our negative feelings and disappointments.
When Randy and I were newlyweds in Peoria, we had a neighbor named Gilbert. Gilbert was sweet, eager to chat, and always thrilled with anything shared from our kitchen. He lived alone, but never struck me as lonely.
We enjoyed conversing with Gilbert. He was patient if we were slow to understand his words. I believe Gilbert had CP. Walking (and talking) were not easy for him, but he walked all over Peoria with a heavy backpack on his back. We believed the burden of the backpack helped him keep his balance. The heavy burden kept him from falling. He never complained. He was grateful to be on the go, and he was... nearly every day.
Memories of Gilbert remind me that some burdens strengthen us, and others we can choose to lay down. Love is greater than hate; love always wins.
When my lifelong friend, Sally Rosenboom, went to be with Jesus, her funeral was beautiful. Her children spoke and my heart is still full because of their thoughts, words, and reflections on their mother's life. Her life was her testimony. Sally put down her cancer burden and ran to Jesus, but she left us all a challenge. We were to memorize 1 Corinthians 13. The whole chapter is only 13 verses.
That card is still at my desk. (Sally, you know I am still working on it. I will complete it before I join you.) It will remain there until I have completed my assignment. Memorizing is so much easier when you are younger. It is a powerful passage that reminds us of the power of love. (And now my Earworm is now singing the Huey Lewis song, "Power of Love.")
"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.
Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.
Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.
When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love." -1 Corinthians 13
Love helps us lay down the burdens we were never meant to carry. Love helps us carry the ones that make us stronger and give us balance. Which ones can we lay down today?
Today, I am grateful for the burdens we can lay down.
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