Talk is cheap

Today I almost told someone how much I love him. I mean, I almost went to town. I'm talking about dragging out the thesaurus; about language borrowed from the dead poets society; about protests of to-the-moon-and-back fidelity; about a "let me count the ways" melody of my manifold affection.

Then the Lord broke in and gave me a verse:

'I refrain [from boasting], so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say" (2 Corinthians 12:6).

The sentence is plucked from a painful letter, the apostle Paul's poignant plea for the affections of the Corinthians, whom he betrothed to the Lord, and who have lately spurned him, beguiled by some Johnny-come-lately false apostles.

Paul is perhaps tempted to woo with detail about visions and out-of-body experiences he had (the false apostles cannot top this) with the Lord 14 years ago-but he thinks better of it. If his present love for the church, his actions prompted by faith and labor produced by love, are not enough to prove his mettle, he will not resort to boast. God can be trusted to separate the dross from the gold, and to show who is true.

Good advice for me, too. Talk is cheap. Many are the romances that started in a great plume of poetry and capsized under the first stiff breeze. Perform the mundane acts of love rather than boast of the greatness of love. Refrain, so that he "will not think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say."