Daily Devotion

When Milne began learning Chinese, he said the task called for "bodies of brass, lungs of steel ... and lives of Methuselahs"—a joke, but also the truth. He did not avoid the difficulty; he learned sentence by sentence, counting each one gained as a dollar earned. Paul said, "I am made all things to all men." That humility is often worked out in exactly this kind of slow, patient labor: learning another's language and understanding how they speak, instead of rushing to hand out answers. We often approach others with the superiority of those who "hold the truth," and are stingy with the time it takes to understand their background, prejudices, and struggles. True service begins with listening and learning. Let us ask ourselves: in my work, family, and relationships, am I willing, for love's sake, to become a patient student first, learning sentence by sentence to understand the people around me?