Love's Mission

A gruesome war, the power of a stamp, and Winnie the Pooh

This episode is the second installment in a ten-part series on learning to love with all our heart, part of a broader goal this year to study the greatest commandments – to love the Lord (and our neighbor) with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  

This week we learn about how to set a seal upon our hearts and how important it is to find a worthy mission.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

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Transcript

World War I, also known as the Great War, lasted four years from 1914 to 1918.  The war involved many countries from around the globe, but the primary fighting occurred in Europe.  To this day, to ask the question what caused World War I will lead you down rabbit holes.  The impetus was the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary, but the dominoes that fell next are more complex.  Alliances and treaties were enacted or invoked, the Allies and the Central Powers aligned with one another into two main hostile forces, and the end result was a geopolitical firestorm that left the modern world divided like never before and Europe ravaged.

And if you were a British citizen, one week to the day after finding out about the assassination of the Archduke – you found yourself in the middle of a World War fought with weapons and tactics far different than the world had ever seen before.  8.7 million British men found themselves at the front lines of trench warfare.  New and devastating technology was unleashed upon them - machine guns, tanks, airplanes, and chemical weapons especially the terrifying mustard gas resulted in high casualty rates.  Death was often grisly – mustard gas in particular was a horrible way to die and due to its delayed onset of symptoms, soldiers often didn’t know they had been exposed until it was too late.  The daily mental strain upon the men at the front was immense.  886,000 military personnel from the United Kingdom and the British Empire alone would die over the next 51 months.  A little more than 10% of the entire enlisted force.

So, one can imagine how hard it could be to keep your resolve up as a British soldier.  You are tired, filthy, you haven’t seen the outside of a trench in ages, your feet hurt, and every day you face uncertainty, death, dismemberment, and loss upon muddy fields that make it hard to remember that a place like home even existed anymore.  So, it can be no surprise that every soldiers’ favorite soldier was the postman.

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

This episode is the second installment in a ten-part series on learning to love with all our heart, part of a broader goal this year to study the greatest commandments – to love the Lord (and our neighbor) with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  In every account of the gospels, the command to love always begins with the heart.

The heart is the thing capable of overriding our mind.  When our heart, the source of our deepest emotions, feels strongly our intellect takes a backseat.  If you have ever panicked at the sight of a snake or spider – you know the impact of heart over mind.  The power of the heart extends beyond the mind – the heart can weaken the knees with the stirrings of romance or blind us to honest critique when heard from a distasteful source.  The heart is the part of you from which all vital action stems.  It is the source of your resolve, your fears, your deepest insecurities, and your highest exultations.  The heart is the headwaters from which all our actions and words flow.

Which is why in the middle of the first World War as machine guns chattered, mustard gas wafted across the battlefields, bombs dropped from on high, and soldiers struggled for breath, food, and safety – the British post kept being delivered.

Every week, 12 million letters were delivered by the British Army Postal Service and the Royal Navy Postal Service.  Over the course of the war, tens of millions of letters and parcels were delivered to and from the front lines.  And here is why – those soldiers weren’t fighting for the Archduke Ferdinand.  They weren’t protecting the Allies against the Central Powers and upholding peace treaties and alliances made by politicians.  Those soldiers were fighting for their families, their friends, their mothers, their fathers, and their siblings, and maybe that special someone that had said she would be waiting for them to come home.

The letters flowed both directions and eventually forever changed literature.  J.R.R. Tolkien wrote letters to his children which included elements that eventually would be interwoven into his books The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Or perhaps even much touching is the correspondence between A.A. Milne and his son.  A.A. Milne eventually would write the beloved Winnie the Pooh series.  His son, Christopher Robin Milne, became the inspiration for Christopher Robin, the dear friend of Pooh bear, beloved by readers of all ages. 

The mission wasn’t to avenge the Archduke, for those soldiers the mission was the people back home… and the British like all successful military powers before and since knew it.  So, despite the dangers and the cost – the military postal service kept the mail flowing because it was a lifeline during the experiences of wartime.

         Here is the truth about loving from the heart.  The heart needs to know what it is fighting for.  The heart needs to know the real mission.  Motivation is limited.  I can only give you so many pep talks from the trenches before you give up, but love is limitless.

         In the most romantic book in all the Bible, Solomon’s Song about two lovers, it says, “Set me as a seal upon your heart, as a seal upon your arm, for love is strong as death, its ardor as unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame.”

         Love galvanizes us.  When we find something to set as a seal upon our hearts – we can face trials, suffering, disappointment, and even death.  When love is from the heart we can endure and persevere and try again even when we fail, not because we are motivated by some quote we read, not because we are inspired by a coaches pep talk, but because the thing we love requires it.  Loving from the heart requires us to find our mission.

         There is an interesting negative example that highlights the power of love’s mission (and the importance of finding a good mission)  in 1 Kings chapter twenty-one.  The king of Israel at the time was a man named Ahab.  Ahab was petty, selfish, and completely self-absorbed.  One of the worst kings that the nation of Israel ever had – which is saying something since they had a lot of very bad kings.

         Yet, Ahab was a king – he had all the things kings typically have.  He had wealth, he had palaces, he had servants, and he had power.  Ahab could do pretty much whatever he wanted – so one day he looked out his window, saw the vineyard next door to his palace and decided he would really like to buy it and expand his palace grounds.  He had plans to remodel the vineyard into a vegetable garden.  So, he offered the owner of the land, Naboth, a deal he didn’t think Naboth could refuse… except Naboth did refuse it.  The vineyard was family land that went back generations – Naboth wasn’t interested in selling at any price.

         Ahab’s reaction is recorded in 1 Kings 21:4

“So Ahab came into his house sullen and vexed because of the word which Naboth the Jezreelite had spoken to him; for he said, "I will not give you the inheritance of my fathers." And he lay down on his bed and turned away his face and ate no food.” (1 Kings 21:4)

         Remember the part where Ahab is a king with all the money, power, and palaces one could ever hope for – it is completely illogical for him to be this upset about one silly little piece of land… but Ahab had set his heart on owning it.  What our heart loves becomes our mission, and in his case, mission impossible meant a complete meltdown.

         Solomon called it “setting a seal” upon your heart… and that matches the wartime mail connection to love’s power, too.  What do you do when you send someone you love a letter?  You write words, from the heart, and then you seal it. The letter becomes a private message sealed from one loved one to another.

         Our hearts love isn’t necessarily known to everyone else.  It is the thing you cherish and treasure in your heart, it is the thing you choose to store up and remind yourself of.  Let me give you some positive and negative examples of storing up and sealing in your heart.

         Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw the events surrounding His childhood and “treasured all these things, pondering them in her heart.” (Luke 2:19)

         Daniel “purposed in his heart” not to do things that would defile him while he lived in Babylon.  The culture had a lot of wickedness, but Daniel loved God and that love motivated him to stay pure.

         Solomon, loved his many wives, and they turned his heart away from God and towards the idols that they loved.  Why would such a wise man as Solomon do that?  It says he “clung to those wives in love.” (1 Kings 11:2)

         Paul said that the reason he wrote the 1st Corinthian letter was because “out of much affliction and anguish of heart” and his “abundant love” for them.  1st and 2nd Corinthians are some of the most important letters in history and they were only written because Paul loved the people from his heart.

         Or if you have ever wondered why people can be cruel or mean or neglectful of others – how can we live in a world with such plenty and so many go hungry and without.  The answer is in 1 John 3:17 – if you see your brother in need and you have the ability to help but don’t – it is because you “closed your heart against him”

         God and people should be seals upon our hearts, like love letters tightly held and remembered for all time so we never forget what our mission and purpose is, but sometimes we do the opposite.  We seal God and our neighbor out of our heart.  We stop reading the mail.

         What would happen if a soldier stopped getting correspondence during the war?  His morale would drop, his effort would falter, and his likelihood of death would increase.  He would be in greater danger and less useful for the cause.  Do not seal your heart against others – it will ruin you.

         You need a why.  Something worth fighting for, a mission, and a cause… and anything other than God and people is an inferior mission.  Money, power, fame, entertainment, success, notoriety, leisure, selfish ambition – all of these are simple poor missions.  They will seal your doom, not your success.

         The other thing that we learn from the great mail delivery of World War 1 is that the mail has to keep flowing.  One letter isn’t enough.  It requires a pipeline of regular correspondence to keep morale up and hearts full of courage.  That means you need to read Scripture and pray all the time.  1st Thessalonians 4:7 says it best “pray without ceasing”.  Prayer sends your letters upstream to Him.

         And make sure you have regular correspondence with people, too.  Do not isolate or hole up.  Build a network of strong people in your life – friends, mentors, and eventually, apprentices, too.  People that you can love and be loved by.  People that remind you of what you are working for.  If you have a desk at work, make sure it has a picture of your family on it – they are the mission.  You work at a company, but you work for them.

         Regularly set these seals upon your heart because when you are in the trenches, you need all the mail you can get.

         Don’t make Ahab’s mistake – find something worthy of your heart’s love.  You can do better than the love of this world.

         Learn to love better.  Learn to set the right seals upon your heart.  Find your heart’s mission.

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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”