THANKS FOR LOVING ME

It is a cold Saturday morning here in Denton, Texas. I am in our workshop working through a recent stack of mail, while Ouida is in the kitchen caring for the creaturely needs of our 18-month old granddaughter, Christie, who has been with us much of the time, since losing her daddy last May. How Ouida adores that child! It is something to behold. Ah, the difference that love makes! Illness, dirty diapers, and crying in the night mean nothing where there is love.

We are preparing to drive to Dallas with some fried chicken (from the restaurant we once owned, a bonus!) for Ouida’s widowed mother, whom I call Mother Pitts, and her sister’s family. Mother Pitts likes her home at the Christian Care Center, a retirement village sponsored by Churches of Christ. If anyone should have a place there it would be Mother Pitts, for all these years she has shared her sparse income with Church of Christ causes all over the world. She is the only person I ever knew to give a tithing of the insurance money from her husband’s death to the church. She is incredibly beautiful at 86, inside and out, just like Ouida.

One of the letters at my side comes from Pasadena, California. It is from a brother who has been a guest in our home, who is now involved in mission research for Churches of Christ. The letter exudes with love. He is eager to read my history book which he had just received, one reason being his respect for the author, he says. He greets Ouida, “your beautiful wife,” and he closes by saying, I love you!

(Christie just barged in, casing the joint to see what further damage she might do, with Ouida right behind her. As Ouida left, with Christie in tow, she reminded me it was time for me to take breakfast to an aged neighbor, whom we have watched after for years. Though he can afford it, he has a thing about nursing homes and refuses the attention he badly needs. Now 90 and alone, life is rough for him, and the little we do is hardly enough. Ouida shaves and barbers him, while I do other chores. He has apparently fallen in love with my wife, for he cannot praise her enough, but that is both understandable and forgivable. As I go through these love letters on my desk I am reminded that this is what our aged neighbor needs most of all, love. He often breaks down and weeps in our arms or on the phone. Once a proud and successful business man, he is now destitute for what he has never really had, to love and to be loved. I sometimes see him as the whole world in miniature, a microcosm, tossed upon a sea of despair, having never learned what life is all about. But the world is like that. It is the world that the Savior came into and died for, so that we might see how the Father loves us all, even when we are old and lonely and cranky.)

Well, the day is done and I am back at my desk, resolved to complete this piece before retiring. Our dear neighbor consumed the healthy pancakes that Ouida prepared for him with dispatch, despite his age, while bemoaning his failing health and expressing fear of tomorrow. That too is understandable and forgivable, I thought as I left his domicile. It figures that the world will moan and be fearful. Jesus wept for such a world.

We found Mother Pitts her same sweet, patient, Christ-like self, thinking of others more than herself, and never a complaint in this world. What a difference Jesus makes! But her memory has begun to betray her and Ouida has to find things for her and to remind her of unpaid bills. What a contrast, little Christie playing on her great grandmother’s lap. One is too young to talk, the other too old to remember! Even though it saddens Ouida, I am left to marvel as to how and why the Father put us together the way He did. Surely ageing relates in some way to what He will do with us in another world.

Back at my desk, with today’s mail added to what was already there, I read more love letters. A Church of Christ minister in Birmingham paid for his history book and scrawled across the invoice, I love you! The world can’t be all that dark when a fellow pays what he owes and turns the invoice into a love letter!

A letter does not have to speak directly of love, of course, in order to be a love letter. A brother writes from New Jersey to the effect that my history book should be in every Campbellite library, and a new correspondent writes from New York that he is thrilled to have discovered Restoration Review, and he wants all bound volumes available. Those too are love letters.

Love letters! Does this not describe the letters of the New Covenant Scriptures? They are love letters more than legal documents, and they must have impressed their recipients as such. John loves us!, Peter loves us!, Paul loves us! they must have thought, once their letters were read, even when they were sometimes critical. They must have been impressed when John the aged wrote: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren” (1 Jn. 3:14), and when Peter wrote: “Without having seen him you love him; though you do not now see him you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy” (1 Pet. 1:8). Such truths are breathtaking in their implications. Love letters!

So as I sit here in a little Texas city, far removed from most of you, reading your letters, I can say most sincerely in response, thank you for loving me (and Ouida). That of course includes the critical letters, for they too are an important part of being an editor and in being loved. In all this I must remind myself, however, as St. Francis insisted, that there is one thing more important than being loved, and that is to love. One might make it in this world without being loved, but not without loving. How much love was shown our Lord in the ordeal of the cross? Yet we appropriately sing, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”

As I grow older as an editor and more experienced in “brotherhood” affairs, I am more convinced than ever that a recovery of that love that hides a multitude of sins is our only hope for renewal as a people. We have had enough debates and confrontations, and we have divided and sub-divided to the point of making ourselves ridiculous. We must rely upon the very Book we claim to follow and concede that only love has the power “to bind everything together in perfect harmony” (Col. 2:14). When we love each other even as He loves us, a new horizon will come into view for our people. This must include those with the most repulsive warts, the worst hangups, the most serious errors, and the most sectarian attitude.

And one day they too will say thank you for loving me. And we will find ourselves a united people without realizing just how it happened.

Well, the day is done. Tomorrow Ouida will accompany me to Burleson, Texas, a few miles below Ft. Worth, where we have a “free” church that is really getting with it, mainly because they have tired of sectarian hate and are learning to love. I plan to teach them about what Paul says about the Holy Spirit in Romans. He doesn’t even mention the Spirit for four full chapters, but when he does, Wow! And before he is through he is writing about the joy and power of the Spirit. I will urge them to be a joy-filled, Spirit-filled and a Spirit-powered church, which is what a Church of Christ in Texas ought to be—for a change!

Ouida has long since put Christie to bed, so I will repair to the kitchen in hopes that my dear wife will join me in a bowl of grape-nuts. She sometimes begs off until she hears me crunching mine. If I crunch long enough, I am certain to have her across the table from me, bowl in hand. It just shows what love will do!—the Editor.