Charity Never Faileth

New Year's Day is for celebration. New Year's Eve is for reflection.

Today, with a year to review, I can't help but acknowledge that I have lately felt a little cheated by the direction I took for the year. It has seemed that a few of my "do the next thing" moments I've lived in obedience to the Lord have been sort of dead ends. And dead ends seem awfully wasteful.

I am, after all, a penny-pincher head to toe. Actually, more. I'll pinch almost anything before I see it go to waste. And so, if I think something's been wasted, I end up down in the dumps. (I don't waste puns either.)

Faithful as He is, the Lord has recently been meeting me in the dumps. And He has been very patient about urging me out. But it wasn't until yesterday that I kind of woke up.

I was sorting through some old notecards and found scrawled across one of them the phrase, "Love is never wasted."

Why do I obey? Because I love Him.

If I do something out of obedience...out of love...and feel afterwards that it was a waste....

I have lost sight, then, of what love is about. After all, "Love seeks not her own." If I am obedient, expecting personal benefit...I will of course take the task of appraising its final worth. With the kind of sacrifices that obedience demands, the present cost often seems a bit high.

That's only natural.

And wrong.

Only when I release the expectation of personal gain can I stop counting daily costs of obedience, and start simply pressing for the goal.

After all, I already know that one "well done" will be worth a thousand tears.

All the figures I've jotted down on my sacrifice vs. benefit slate are a little meaningless now.

Because no matter how many negatives appear on the benefit side, the hard, cold eqautions disappear entirely when seen through a lonely hill, a jeering crowd, and a cross...

That and the words "Love is never wasted."