The Most Important Thing

The Apostle Paul understood clearly that the most important thing in all of human life is God’s Love. His own life was transformed by it-revolutionized-and he just could not stop talking about it. But he did have a problem with his fellow early Christians about this. And Christians have been having the same problem ever since, namely, we get to the point where we take this most important thing in life for granted. We repeat the cliches and the standard phrases about it, and we sing the traditional songs about it, until they become very commonplace in our lives. They cease to be meaningful statements about life and death and about who we are and what we ought to be doing. They become instead signs of this problem of taking the love of God for granted.

A World War II Navy man tells the story of what happened aboard his destroyer when news of the War’s end came and orders were received to destroy…