Article December 27, 1982 Issue

It's what you do that counts

FRANCINE MIENIK

How often have you said to yourself, "I wish I could feel love for that person, but he is so unkind (difficult, cruel, boring, angry, and so forth)"? We know we should love more, and we want to; and yet we seem unable to feel that love Christ Jesus spoke of when he instructed us to love our enemies, bless them that curse us, do good to them that hate us, and even pray for those who use us despitefully.^{ See Matt. 5:44 .}

How can we feel the love that will enable us to follow his remarkable counsel? I was really searching for answers and found one in a children's book. In A Wind in the Door, Meg, the heroine, asks Proginoskes, the cherubim, how she can possibly feel love for Mr. Jenkins, the disagreeable school principal. The cherubim finds Meg's question extremely odd, answering: "Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do."^{ Madeleine L'Engle, A Wind in the Door (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), p. 116 .}

Actually we often experience this possibility. We can feel one way and act another. We can feel fear and yet act bravely. Why not adapt this ability to the area of love? We can initially feel a lack of love and respect for some other person and yet be patient and kind to him on the basis that it is our true nature to act that way. It may feel difficult at first, but if we truly understand man to be the child of God, we can succeed in the honest effort to discern and prove man's spiritual nature. The rewards are superb. It becomes impossible to consciously love someone as the child of God and continue to feel a lack of love and respect. Eventually the doing leads to healing of the negative feeling. We begin to know the pure joy of loving another in spite of what he seems to be and in spite of our personal appraisal.

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