Greetings, from The Moon. …
I was just thinking while I was coming out here. Madge and I, of course, read a devotional every morning and we will read from some theological book. We have been reading Chesterton lately.
Chesterton was a philosopher, a theologian, a columnist, a novelist…he did everything. I think he wrote 80 books, more than 200 poems, and 4,000 articles or essays. It has been said that if there wasn’t a Chesterton, there wouldn’t have been a C. S. Lewis or a J. R. R. Tolkien.
We were reading from Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” today. Chesterton was talking about the world that we live in. Things are not great but we don’t love things because they are great; but, basically, things are great because we love them.
He said it is not that the world is too sad to NOT love or too glad NOT TO love. He said we love it because, in loving it, we make it better, basically.
If we love something, Chesterton was saying, that creates gladness. Then we can love something because of the gladness. And if something creates sadness, we ought to love it all the more.
That was a thought I had not thought about in that context before.
Chesterton was also talking about how people didn’t love Rome because she was great; she was great because people loved Rome.
He said you don’t decorate something that is ugly to hide it; you decorate the adorable.
There is so much truth in that. We need to love, and decorate, and cherish, and adore the good, the beautiful, the truthful.
It all got me to thinking that the importance is that I need to love where I am, who I am around, who God brings me in contact with, and where I live. And, not just always see the faults. And if I see the faults, then I need to realize that if it creates sadness, I need to love it all the more.
It is like agape love . There are four types of Greek love: agape love (which is unconditional), storge love (which is an old shoe love), eros love (passionate or sexual love), and philia love (brotherly or friendship love).
Agape is when you love something unconditionally. If we want to change something, we have got to love it unconditionally. That is one of the hardest things in the world for me to do. It is the Love that matters most.
I hope that I will love better this year and that God will help me. I thank Chesterton for giving me insight into things that I don’t normally see in the way he presents it.
Chesterton can take three pages to set up a proposition, but then, Boom! He’s got it.
By Chilly Billy Howell
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