Continuing from yesterday, Neal A. Maxwell wrote: “Jesus loved us enough to sacrifice and suffer for us, more than we can know—and, perhaps, ever fully appreciate. His love is not that love which only follows us as far as the border of inconvenience and then halts. There are so many times in life when we recoil from further service to others as they become too demanding. When we see what it is we are getting into, we so often want to get out.
While clearly there are inappropriate impositions to be avoided, how do you and I expect to learn much about long-suffering if our service to others only involves quick acts of affection and brief brotherhood? Do we not see how it is that God has been long-suffering with us, and that to know Him we must be prepared over much time to experience such things ourselves?
Perfect love is perfectly patient. Loving patience with a disobedient child, long-term service in the sickness of a love one who needs to be waited upon hand and foot—these are things that will stretch our souls more than so many other forms of service. To write a check, though financial sacrifice is real, is not quite the same thing as, day in and day out, providing brotherhood for the bedridden. Those of us who see others so ministering are privileged to see gallantry that is Godlike in the regularity of service and in its selflessness.
Yet keeping the second commandment—to love our neighbor as ourselves—requires more than we know, the development of healthy self-regard. Unless, therefore, we ourselves are improving and growing, our neighbors and associates will tend to suffer at our hands—if only from acts of omission.
We will be much aided in loving and serving others if we are able to give and accept counsel, correction, and commendation as we move along the strait and narrow path. Moreover, this is not a trek we can make alone—either without Him or without helping neighbors. ~Neal A. Maxwell, ‘All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience’, Deseret Book, 1979 p.67-70
