NOT IN WORD, NEITHER IN TONGUE
"MY little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth" (I. John 3, 18).
Five little girls stood in a garden telling each other how dearly each one of them loved her mother. The words became more and more emphatic until finally Bertha—the eldest of them—poking her nose upward, said decisively: "I love my mamma so much that I could die for her sake." And thus everyone was brought to silence.
But on a bench a little farther away in the garden Bertha's aunt sat sewing; she overheard it all, and then said: "It is strange that a little girl who loves her mother so much that she would be willing to die for her, does not love her enough to wash dishes for her. I heard this noon, Bertha, that you didn't want to do the dishes for your mamma!"
It is strange, indeed!
"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."
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The young man says to his bride: "I love you, darling, so much that I could carry you on my hands all through life!"—A year after the wedding it may happen that he cannot carry up a bucket of coal from the basement for her.
That's strange, too.
The young woman says to her fiancé: "I love you so much that I could die for you!"—But if it is a question of that new Easter bonnet, she cannot save a dollar out of regard for her husband's pocketbook: She doesn't love him that much.
You do not love each other enough to sacrifice for each other's sake—or to be a bit patient with each other—or to cut down a little your own personal demands out of regard for each other. Therefore we have so many divorces.
"My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."
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Charles Dickens tells in one of his books of two sisters who are discussing how intently they wish to do something really great and good. Under the petty circumstances at home they couldn't get the chance. But if they might be sent out as missionaries among the heathens—O, how they would toil just to help those poor people! It didn't matter that perhaps they would have to suffer the pangs of hunger and persecution—if they only could show people their love.
Just then their old grandmother who was sick abed in the next room, said: "O, girls, won't one of you come and scratch my back?"
"You can do that," the one said. "No, you'd better do it," said the other. "It's always up to me—you might do it once in a while!"
That was the end of the glory—and of the love. On distant shores; under other circumstances they would do deeds of love. But in that everyday life where God had placed them, it wasn't quite as easy as all that to show their love.
We can all catch ourselves in similar shortcomings. We would like to be charitable on a grand scale if we were elsewhere or differently situated; but in everyday life—it is so prosaic just to help an old mother, or a grandfather, or some sick and poor person. And yet it is that which submits us to the crucial test.
"My little children, let us love not in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth."