Reflections by Maxie Dunnam

Reflections by Maxie Dunnam 

Paul’s “Hymn of Love” (First Corinthians 13) is one of the best-known sections of Scripture. In all my years of ministry there have been few weddings in which I have not referred to this great love reflection. When thoughts and reflections are being connected with love, none can do better than to read and spend some time with this “Hymn of Love”. 

“But have not love” is an attention getting phrase that occurs three times in the first three verses of the hymn. “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels — but have not love.” 

“If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and knowledge, and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains — but have not love.” 

“If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned — but have not love.” Paul closes his last “but have not love” with the dogmatic word, “I gain nothing.” He makes his point clearly; nothing is of any use if love is missing. Bereft of love, we become less than we are as humans. 

After my sermon, in a conference where I was preaching, people were in a line greeting me. I saw a woman “hanging back.” I knew she wanted a bit more time than the usual greeting and thank you. I was so moved by her affirmation and self-introduction that I spontaneously hugged her. You would have thought I had given a glass of water to a person dying of thirst, or a $1,000 to a penniless beggar. Her face was aglow. “Thank you,” she exclaimed, and added, “Nobody hugs me anymore.” 

She told me more: the loss of her husband 10 years before, her children scattered and she was now living alone. She doesn’t get any hugs. 

If we know we are loved — and hugging helps us to know — we can bear anything. But if we have not love, we become less than human. 

It is easy to grow careless of the ones we are supposed to love. We become thoughtless of the little things that keep love alive. So we don’t hug as much as we should. We don’t speak kind and loving words to our spouses. We take each other for granted, and to take another for granted is to make them less than human. 

Words and actions can wound us, but so can no words and no action. Indifference, disregard, neglect — these are the painful bullets that penetrate our hearts and bring emotional death. These deaths are silent. We don’t see them because we are not looking — we’re not listening. The ears and eyes of our hearts are closed to those around us — sometimes even to those we love. 

Of all that we must be intentional about, love is paramount. 

Reflections by Maxie Dunnam

“It isn’t any of our business, is it, Lord?” A little girl with a tender conscience asked this question in her evening prayer. She had seen a poor needy man on the street that day. “Oh, Mama,” she had said, “let’s help him.” The mother had answered, “Come along, dear. It isn’t any of our business.” 

That night, when the little girl had said, “Now I lay me down to sleep,” she added, “Oh God, bless that poor man on the comer.” And then remembering her mother’s words that day, she added, “But really, it isn’t any of our business, is it, Lord?” 

Unknowingly the little girl expressed a tragic fact. Many of us grow up conditioned by the feeling that the world and the people about us are none of our business. How untrue! Recall Dickens’ Christmas Carol and be haunted by those words of Jacob Marley’s Ghost. “Business! Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business Charity, mercy, forbearance and benevolence were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop in the water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!” 

Everyman is our business. What happens to the person next door, down the street, across town, yes, even beyond the ocean is our business. We too easily forget one of the clearest words of Jesus, “Inasmuch as you did it unto the least of these you did it unto me.” 

At our age, living in a community like Kirby Pines, it is easy to seclude ourselves, to shut off from others. We even think “other peoples’ lives are none of my business.” The fact is others are our business, and our setting gives us opportunity to take care of business by genuinely caring for one another. 

Because we are “retired,” or at an age that has moved us from a former “active” life, does not relieve us the responsibility of caring. To be sure, there are needs in our community and we can focus our caring locally. But our attention must be broader. I suggest we listen to the news to keep us sensitive to the needs of the world, thus our praying can be focused. And most of us can contribute financially as well as pray. I am convinced that praying and contributing financially to causes that are serving the world is a means of grace that enables us to be more purposefully Kingdom People. 

Put Your Thinking Cap On

I’m calling this column REFLECTIONS. To reflect is to ponder, to meditate and contemplate. Reflecting is thinking about something carefully. Because this is what I’ll be doing in in these REFLECTIONS, there may be a banner accompanying the article calling you to PUT ON YOUR THINKING CAP. The term “thinking cap” denotes an imaginary cap to be worn in order to facilitate thinking. My high school teacher who influenced me most would often say that when we were beginning to explore a new subject. 

In Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, the hero is about to walk along a heavy but rotting beam over a brooding, murky creek. Starting over, stepping gingerly . . . he felt he would never reach the other side: always he would be balanced here, suspended between land and in the dark and alone. Then feeling the board shake as Idabel started across, he remembered that he had someone to be together with. And he could go on. 

Isn’t this our experience? It certainly has been mine. I shiver at the thought of having to go it alone. I get chills when I consider where I might be if, at the right time, I had not felt the board shake because someone was walking with me! 

Life in community, particularly the Christian walk is a shared journey. Whether Christian or not, living in a community such as ours at Kirby Pines, we do not walk alone; others walk with us. Paul provided some guidance for our journey together. I urge you to read Gal. 6:1-6. 

Paul is talking about interrelatedness and interdependence. This principle is laced throughout Paul’s epistles. If one member suffers all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together (1 Cor. 12:26 R.S.V.). We who are strong ought to bear the failings of the weak (Rom. 15:1 R.S.V). The new life into which we have been born through Christ is a shared life. Because we belong to Christ, we belong to each other. In community, we are bound to each other, to Christ, and to God. Our life is a shared life.