“My son, thou art not yet strong and prudent in thy love.”
“Wherefore O my Lord?”
“Because for a little opposition thou fallest away from thy undertakings, and too eagerly seekest after consolation. The strong lover standeth fast in temptations, and believeth not the evil persuasions of the enemy. As in prosperity I please him, so in adversity I do not displease.”
“The prudent lover considerest not the gift of the lover so much as the love of the giver. He looketh for the affection more than the value, and setteth all gifts lower than the Beloved. The noble lover resteth not in the gift, but in Me above every gift.”
Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
I briefly touched on love and the Hupomone life (sounds like a bad comedy form the 70’s…but it’s not) in an earlier piece. When I read this paragraph from The Imitation of Christ, I thought it time to open the topic again. Thomas a Kempis in his dialogue with his Lord and Savior examines the quality of Hupomone love. Though written in the 15th century it stands as a challenging definition of love.
“Wherefore O my Lord?” protests our protagonist. It is perhaps our arrogance in self-reflection that most aptly defines our lack of prudent love. We are like the unprepared virgins, not realizing our lack of oil until it is too late….or until the Lord Himself calls us out and we stop our frantic efforts to listen carefully to His words. Kempis utilizes this conversation milieu throughout this work. It is more than a literary it device. Kempis highlights the need for us to be in constant communication with God. It is only when we accept conversation with Him as a lifestyle that we move forward in our imitation of Christ. This is more than Sunday mornings and perhaps Wednesday nights. It is even more than daily devotions and scheduled times of prayer. These are not bad but perhaps consider them disciplines of faith as opposed to conversations of love. We often do them out of a sense of duty not a heart of love. A discipline can become mechanical and void of meaning. A loving relationship and the conversations that must accompany it are filled with meaning and actually feed life into the disciplines. We are called to be in relationship with God 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. When do that we are well on our way to imitating Christ.
Hupomone Love listens to the Words of our Lord and recognizes the truth of His assessment. It is an everyday, every hour, every minute relationship.
“for a little opposition” The Lord uncovers our instability in love. The word circumstance comes up again and again in our Hupomone discussion. Whether it is our love for God or our love for those around us when a little opposition raises it head, how quickly we fall away. Interestingly enough Kempis says “little opposition”. When the sky is falling and disaster raises its ugly head we tend to cling to our Lord and Savior and band together to battle the incoming doom. It is the “little oppositions” that send us running, too often to places we should not be. We drop the armor of God for the tranquilizing pillows of consolation. When we take our eyes off of Jesus and begin to look at the circumstances of our lives as guides then we forfeit the effectiveness of His promise to be with us always (notice I said effectiveness, the promise stands and the truth of it is eternal). It is when we have fled in the face of these little things that we are to crash and burn when the world throws its weight against us.
Hupomone Love does not fall down or drop its armor at the first sign of trouble.
Having expressed His assessment of the writers love, God moves on to the qualities of prudent love. Join me next week as I continue to consider this conversation with God and The Proving of a True Lover.
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