When Love Becomes Trivial
There is no disguise which can for long conceal love where it exists or stimulate it where it does not.
François de la Rochefoucauld1
God does not need praise by men, but he knows apriori, that when men cease to praise him, they begin to praise one another excessively.
Isaac Bashevis Singer2
As I sit to write this chapter on love, I feel most unloving. Things have gone wrong all day. The weather doesn't help—it's muggy, the air heavy and oppressive, sapping my energy as the August rain drips outside. Perhaps the dreariness affected my associate. This afternoon he did something totally out of character, and I responded in kind. I got home late for supper, and my wife, not knowing when I would arrive, had nothing prepared. She offered to put slices of tomato and cheese on top of a piece of bread and grill it for me. Ugh. My stomach cringes, and all I can think about is that I have to go back to the office and write this chapter on love. Feeling as I do, how can I write about the love of God as a motivation for prayer?
None of today's incidents have made me feel unloving toward God. They make me feel unloving toward myself and toward the inconvenient incidents of life, but not toward God. My reasoning is too mundane. The muggy weather did not make me question God's providence—I know too much about meteorology for that. I did not mishandle my associate because I lacked the love of God in my heart—it was because I used an inadequate management technique. If I had phoned my wife and worked out plans for supper based on my late arrival, my stomach would not be queasy now from my pseudo-supper. I blame everything but God for my lack of love.
That's precisely the problem. We have so trivialized love that God is not even involved. True, ...
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