When it’s dark and quiet as your head rests on the pillow, and gone are the nagging day-to-day to-do-isms that have kept your feet moving, your mind awakens.
Another ministry leader falls. Scandal shows up on your newsfeed from another person who claimed to be Christian. Our kingdoms on earth are built on foundations of sand instead of Stone. Or on normal nights, noting the comments online or thinking about the people who can’t see clearly how their words can build up or tear down; it’s their right to say and do as they please publicly regardless of the consequences. And how I pull back my fingers from the keyboard, choosing to walk this walk upright as best as possible.
Then, there’s the diaspora.
With so little time during the week, how do I reach them? How do I connect?
To connect, I need to learn about their culture which requires a whole lot of listening first and asking a lot of questions. To make connections online, you have to invest the time.
So as I think about walking the walk and my own deficiencies, I think of these verses always:
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
– 1 Corinthians 13