Blog 2481 – 08.10.2022
“And Yet I Show You A More Excellent Way”
We are, most of us all too quick to share our opinions, and at the same time reluctant to put ourself in the other person’s shoes and to try to see things from their point of view. Today my lovely and loving wife Linda and I are celebrating our thirty-third wedding anniversary. We have over the past thirty-three years held a lot of conflicting opinions that could have destroyed our bond and came near doing so more than once. How exactly are two different personalities expected to merge into one?
Allowing one another space to have our own experiences is a crucial ingredient in baking a wedding cake that continues to tastes sweet throughout the years. Putting our own wishes and desires aside and sincerely trying to know what the other desires and wishes is love. Love does not always have to have its own way but discovers a more excellent way, the way of empathy, the way of charity.
A Cherokee proverb says, “Before judging your neighbor one should first walk a mile in their moccasins.” The great problem with opinions, informed or not, religious, political, or sporting is that we have a tendency to grant too much preference to our own opinions thinking them somehow sacrosanct. They are not and we would do well to hold them lightly allowing them to change as new information presents itself.
Gambling on our opinions to always be right is a sucker’s bet for we are not prophets. The Bible definition of a true prophecy is that his or her predictions always come true. The writer of the great love chapter expressed his opinions on the gift of prophecy, the gift of languages and the gift of knowledge to understand all mysteries. (And by the way the King James Version uses the word charity for love and what is charity but empathy?) the writer’s opinion was that far greater than the the gifts of prophecy, language, and knowledge was the gift of charity, empathy, love…the more excellent way in his somewhat informed opinion.
I do not believe there ever lived a prophet who always got it right, nor that anyone ever had a perfect gift of languages or knowledge or loved perfectly for that matter. But I happened to have married a sweet lady thirty-three years ago who does that last one as near perfect as anyone I have ever known or hope to know. Will we have another year to share this wonderful journey together? Neither she nor I are prophets, linguistic professors, nor all-knowing, but through great trial and error we have, I believe, learned to see at least a few things through each other’s eyes, my endless love and I.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Endless Love
theencouragingword 