If I have the language ever so perfectly and speak like a pundit and have not love that grips the heart, I am nothing.
If I have decorations and diplomas and am proficient in up-to-date methods and have not the touch of understanding love, I am nothing.
If I am able to worst my opponents in argument so as to make fools of them, and have not the wooing note, I am nothing.
If I have all faith and great ideals and magnificent plans and wonderful visions, and have not the love that sweats and bleeds and weeps and prays and pleads, I am nothing.
If I surrender all prospects, and leaving home and friends and comforts, give myself to the showy sacrifice of a missionary career, and turn sour and selfish amid the daily annoyances and personal slights of a missionary life, and though I give my body to be consumed in the heat and sweat and mildew of India, but have not the love that yields its rights, its covet ed leisure, its pet plans, I am nothing, NOTHING. Virtue has ceased to go out of me.
If I can heal all manner of sickness and disease, but wound hearts and hurt feelings for want of love that is kind, I am nothing.
If I write books and publish articles that set the world agape, but fail to transcribe that word of the Cross in the language of love, I am nothing.
Worse, I may be competent, busy, fussy, punctilious, and well-equipped, but like the church at Laodicea—nauseating to Christ.
(By a missionary student in Indian language school. This is from The Prairie Overcomer, January, 1955. I was cut to the heart as I thought back over my own attitudes during my missionary work in Ecuador. God knows I needed the above reminder today and every day.)
**Excerpt originally published in The Elisabeth Elliot Newsletter September/October 1998