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July 29

Love and Duty

 

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.  ––1 John 3:18

 

I met Malik at church and he wanted to talk about his marriage. He told me he’d been married 11 years, and that he and his wife had three kids ages 1, 4, and 6. Malik was great at his job, was a good provider as they’d made the decision that Alissa, his wife, would take a break from her sales job to stay home with the kids. 

 

It wasn’t that Malik didn’t love Alissa, or even that he wanted to cheat on her. He was just … tired. Tired of the day in and day out of going to work, coming home to semi-chaos (even though Alissa was a great mom), and the whole … routine. I could tell he felt guilty about how he felt. He wasn’t giving up on his life or his wife, but he was struggling to stay engaged as a husband and father. 

 

This reminded me of the novel The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham. In the story English bacteriologist Walter Fane and his wife, Kitty, move to a remote region of 1920s China to combat a cholera outbreak. The wife is drifting in the midst of a life crisis and on the heels of an affair, unsure of her love for Walter. 

 

Toward the end of the novel, when Kitty realizes that she actually does love her husband, and in response to Kitty’s claim that sticking with her husband has to do with duty, the mother superior of the local French convent says,

“Remember that it is nothing to do your duty, that is demanded of you and is no more meritorious than to wash your hands when they are dirty; the only thing that counts is the love of duty; when love and duty are one, then grace is in you and you will enjoy a happiness which passes all understanding.”

 

Like the lines from Maugham’s powerful novel, I do believe that when love and duty are one, then grace is in us and we will enjoy a happiness that passes all understanding. I encouraged Malik to see his wife as God sees her—in all her glory. The more we can see our loved ones through God’s eyes, the more we find that grace which emerges when love and duty converge. 

 

Father, help me see my loved ones as You do, and help me love them in the spirit of Christ. 

____________________

Somerset Maugham on Love, Duty and Free Will

 

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