By David ReayThursday 19 Oct 2017LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 0 minutes
Transcript:
Read 1 Corinthians 13:7
7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. (NLT)
Some books have memorable endings. One of my most memorable and moving is that of the novel On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. A newly married couple have early conflict in their marriage and their final dialogue takes place on Chesil Beach, a shingle beach in the UK. Listen to what the husband thinks as his wife walks away:
This is how the entire course of a life can be changed.by doing nothing. He could have called out to her or gone after her. He did not know or would not have cared to know, that as she ran away from him, certain in her distress that she was about to lose him, she had never loved him more, or more hopelessly, and that the sound of his voice would have been a deliverance, and she would have turned back. Instead, he stood in cold and righteous silence in the summer’s dusk, watching her hurry along the shore.
And so the marriage ended almost as soon as it had begun. Because of an unresolved conflict, because ‘cold and righteous silence’ consumed the man, just as petulant anger consumed the woman. A bit of humility and vulnerability would likely have saved the situation and changed both lives.
As our text reminds us, love endures, it doesn’t give up. It doesn’t wish for two people who love each other to just let go of one another. It meets difficulties head-on and seeks to overcome them rather than be overcome by them. It does not simply do nothing. Doing nothing to save a love may mean losing that love.
Blessings
David Reay