Compassion: A 14-Day JourneySample

Stewardship of Relationship--Love
First Corinthians 13, the memorable "love chapter," is the obvious New Testament analogue of this passage in Song of Songs. Although feelings of love tend to be strong in the beginning of a romance, it takes work to nurture and mature the love relationship. Consider the beautiful manifestation of unselfishness at the end of the following illustration, which editors and movie analysts Craig Brian Larson and Andrew Zahn describe as follows:

In the movie Family Man, Jack Campbell (played by Nicholas Cage) is the successful president of an investment house in New York City--and he's happily single. He has everything, or so he thinks, including a sports car and a radiant girlfriend. But on Christmas morning the world turns upside down. He wakes up in a "what if?" scenario, finding himself twelve years into marriage with his college sweetheart and two small children. He desperately tries to rediscover his old life but in the process begins to find out what he's really been missing all these years. In particular, he finds that living life for yourself alone is not as fulfilling as living your life for others.

Toward the end of the movie Jack discusses with his wife a job opportunity that would revive some of his former glory. Taking the job would mean a big move for the family, but Kate (played by Te‡ Leoni) says she's willing to make a sacrifice for the sake of the family--a defining moment that helps Jack see what marriage is all about. Kate makes this declaration: "Maybe I was being na.ve, but I believed that we would grow old together in this house. That we'd spend holidays here and have our grandchildren come visit us here. I had this image of us all gray and wrinkly and me working in the garden and you repainting the deck. Things change. If you need this, Jack, if you really need this--I'll take these kids from the life they love, and I'll take myself from the only home we've ever known together, and I'll move wherever you need to go. I'll do that because I love you. I love you. And that's more important to me than our address. I choose us."

Theologian Kenneth Boa, in a discussion of the stewardship of relationships, refers to an illustration of a poignant, real-life boyhood experience:

In The Effective Father, Gordon McDonald relates a story about James Boswell, the famous biographer of Samuel Johnson. Boswell often referred to a childhood memory of a day he spent fishing with his father. On that special day, his father taught him many insights that Boswell treasured for life. Many years later, someone looked up this particular day in the journal that Boswell's father kept to see what his father recorded about this significant experience in the life of his son. The journal for that day had only one sentence: "Gone fishing today with my son; a day wasted."