The Way of Love

by M. Basil Pennington

THERE IS NOTHING you and I can do for the Lord that he could not get someone else to do. He could raise up sons and daughters to Abraham out of the field stones and give them the talent, the inspiration, and the grace to carry out all our tasks.

There is only one thing that you and I can give to the Lord that absolutely no one else can give him. He dreamed about it, as it were, from all eternity, when he thought of creating us. If we do not give it to him, he will never get it. In this he has made himself a beggar. For he truly wants what we have to give, yet he can get it only if we decide freely to give it to him.

What is this one thing -- the one thing necessary? It is our personal love. This is what God made us for: to lavish the joy of his love upon us, which can be received only with love, the love that returns to him our personal love. No one else can ever give him our personal love. If we do not give it to him, he will never receive this particular love -- which he wants!

Even for those of us who are called to an active ministry within the body of Christ, it is essential that we spend enough time at the feet of the Master. We need to nourish our love and establish strongly in our hearts a true perspective so that we do not worry or fret, but always choose the better part -- the one thing necessary -- the way of love.



Taken from Breaking Bread: The Table Talk of Jesus by M. Basil Pennington., (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1986).