Life is to Learn to Love!

By J.R.Miller from Streams in the Desert 2

The great business of a true Christian life is to learn to love. Mr. Browning, in his Death in the Desert, puts into the mouth of the dying Saint John these words:

For life, with all it yields of joy or woe,

And hope and fear-believe the aged friend-

Is just our chance o´the prize of learning love,

How love might be, hath been indeed, and is;

And that we hold thenceforth to the uttermost

Such prize despite the envy of the world.

Life with all its experiences is just our chance of learning love. The lesson is set for us-" Thou shall love"; "As I have loved you, that you also love one another." Our one thing is to master this lesson. We are not in this world to get rich, to gain power, to become learned in the arts and sciences, to build up a great business, or to do large things in any line. We are not here to get along in our daily work, in our shops, or schools, or homes, or on our farms. We are not here to preach the gospel, to comfort sorrow, to visit the sick, and perform deeds of charity. All of these, or any of these, may be among our duties, and they may fill our hands; but in all our occupations the real business of life, that which we are always to strive to do, the work which must go in all our experiences, if we grasp the true meaning of life at all, is to learn to love, and to grow loving in disposition and character.

We may learn the finest arts of life-music, painting, sculpture, poetry, or master the noblest sciences, or by means of reading, study, travel, and converse with refined people, may attain, the best culture; but if in all this we do not learn love, and become more gentle in spirit and behavior, we have missed the prize of living. If in the midst of all our duties, care, trials, joys, sorrows, we are not day by day growing in sweetness, in gentleness, in unselfishness, in thoughtfulness, and in all branches of love, we are not learning the great lesson set for us by our Master in this school of life.

"If God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." (1John4:11)