the better thing
In the late afternoon, we sit and sip coffee from steaming cups, two friends with a wealth of life between us and crinkles at the corners of our eyes. We toss aside our phones, with all their connection that disconnects, and wrap our fingers around warm mugs. I brewed the coffee and she showed up with the cream, because somehow (kids) I’m always running out. The last time we did this, she left me all the flavorful, creamy remnants pulled together from her own cupboards and fridge; she brought scones because she knew we needed them.
In the corner of my living room, we sink into our chairs and talk openly of answers to our prayer, of the tightness of our God-clinging fingers. I even look down at my hand, at the ropy veins, the fingers curled in my lap. Every day, we hold on to Life. My friend and I, we remember moments, letting our voices break. We dream for our children; we confess our failures; we see light spilling from cracked-up places in each other. Friendship is that place where we come out of hiding.
“I need to talk, face to face, with people who know me,” she says, and I nod, recognizing the steady stream of Spirit words, the comments of God always softly lapping against the barriers in my heart. My word for the year is with; Christ has reminded me why he died. He has turned my eyes toward the economy of the Kingdom, where love–the kind that acts, the kind that sacrifices, the kind that is ever-present, holds greatest value.
“Me too,” I say, but I’m task-y and introverted; being still, even for coffee with a friend, feels like an indulgence. “But why do I always let this feel like something to do if I can find the time, like a treat, instead of a necessity?” I grip my mug, turning it contemplatively. I think of Paul’s words to the Corinthians:
If I were to speak with eloquence in earth’s many languages, and in the heavenly tongues of angels, yet I didn’t express myself with love, my words would be reduced to the hollow sound of nothing more than a clanging cymbal. And if I were to have the gift of prophecy with a profound understanding of God’s hidden secrets, and if I possessed unending supernatural knowledge, and if I had the greatest gift of faith that could move mountains, but have never learned to love, then I am nothing. And if I were to be so generous as to give away everything I owned to feed the poor, and to offer my body to be burned as a martyr, without the pure motive of love, I would gain nothing of value.
Love is large and incredibly patient.
1 Corinthians 13:1-4 TPT
Just before that famous chapter, Paul wrote that love is “the most excellent way (1 Corinthians 12:31)”. I think of Mary and Martha, of how Mary chose “the better thing (Luke 10:42)”. I always mix it up, favoring eloquence and busyness and even that martyrdom over the cultivation of love. Jesus never called Martha’s service wrong; he called Mary’s decision better. Time spent with–with God and with each other, time spent on love, is time spent better.
“I know,” my friend says; she and I are sisters. We share years of history; a thousand vulnerable avenues of faith. She struggles in the same self-made prison; but she usually chooses better than I do. “I always feel like I should be doing something, like I should be checking something off my list,” she says. “But I need this.”
Again I nod, smiling, feeling tears gather and slip from the corners of my eyes in response, because so do I. Her attention reminds me I’m seen and heard; her friendship reminds me that I’m more than the sum of the things I do; her convictions spur me on.
“We’ve decided we want to give as much as we possibly can,” she says, taking a careful sip, and I remember an echo of something Ann Voskamp wrote about multiplying time by giving it away to each other. We chase time, but we really only feel it slow when we stop dividing every moment and choose to give them wholly instead. The Kingdom economy works this way: God multiplies interest on everything given sacrificially, for love is sacrifice. So the time we give God, those Sabbaths released from our white-knuckled hands, those hours we give away to each other, fortify a week of difficult steps. Our laughter rumbles like thunder. Our conversations will be heard for miles.
I want to give as much as I possibly can too, I think, peering over the edge of my cup, watching the steam drift. And right now, my emptied hands hold nothing but warmth.
