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O servant can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon. (Luke 16:13)
Love is naturally concentrated on the object of its affection. It is not spiritually possible to love another and hate them at the same time – we either love or we do not! We are servants to whatever it is that is loved in our hearts. All our efforts are focused on that one thing. So, love is a beneficent master in our lives. But hate is also a master; however, hate is a malicious master. Hatred can take over the soul of man and rule his every action. We cannot serve the two opposing masters of love and hate at once. For the Christian believer, there is no Master but God, and God is LOVE. It is the love of God than enables us to love our neighbor as well as the beauty of Creation with which God has blessed us.
We are told in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is patient, kind, long-suffering, and seeks the best for others. Hate, on the other hand is not patient nor sacrificial except in its drive to destroy the lives of others and to covet their possessions. Hate feeds on itself and grows in intensity and is the invention of a malignant evil of the imagination of man while love, by its very nature, is an overflowing fountain whose source is God Himself. The heart of man is controlled by one or the other of these two dispositions.
What mother could ever choose between two of her children which should live or which should die. Her love cannot be divided between those two objects of her love.
King Solomon was the wisest man ever to live. In his youth, he prayed for wisdom – not wealth; but, because of his prayer for wisdom only, God blessed him with both wisdom and wealth. His wisdom in discerning human nature is legendary. God blessed Solomon with an understanding heart. An excellent example is presented of this wisdom of discernment in the Third Chapter of 1 Kings – Verses 16 through 28. In this passage, we have a perfect example of the emblems of a mother’s love for her child.
Immediately following Solomon’s prayer for an understanding heart of wisdom, he was confronted with a circumstance of two harlots who dwelled in the same quarters and both of whom had given birth to a child. One woman’s child was born healthy while the other woman’s child died in its sleep. The woman with the dead child exchanged it during the hours of darkness with the woman’s healthy child and claimed the living child as her own. These two women came to Solomon seeking a solution. As both claimed the living child as her own, Solomon demanded his man of war to bring a sword and divide the living baby in two halves and give each woman a half of the child. But the true mother of the child immediately relented and requested that the other woman be given the whole child. Love cannot be divided. The true mother would have made any sacrifice to assure the life of her child.
King Solomon wisely knew the true mother was the one who would prefer life for her child than to see it pitilessly divided by the sword, and he granted the child to the rightful mother whole.
We all make choices in life that are driven by the motivations of our heart. If our hearts are possessed of a love of God and our neighbor, our actions will be governed by that beneficent heart; but if we our hearts are subject to mammon as master, we will act based on that sentiment.
What are our own thoughts when we see a starving child, a poor widow left without support, or even a wounded animal suffering along the road of life? The Master of our heart will determine our response.
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HOUGH I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:1-7)
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