Affection in Christian preaching refers to the deep, heartfelt love and devotion believers have toward God and others, shaping their spiritual and moral lives. Illustrations often use images of warmth, closeness, and sincere emotional bonds to emphasize how true affection directs one's priorities and actions (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). It highlights the importance of guarding affections to avoid misplaced attachments that can hinder faith (Colossians 3:2).
Mourning can blind believers to blessings and duties if affections are misplaced.
There is a mourning that blinds to blessings and duties. Don't let affections be bound up in one you cannot esteem on Christian grounds
God's people should live plainly and think highly, showing indifference to worldly delights.
Plain living and high thinking go together. God's people should not set affections on the delights of sense, but should look upon them with indifference
Lincoln's affectionate response to a child's gift showed hope for her future goodness.
When Lincoln, on his way by train from Washington to Gettysburg, was halted at a station, a little girl was lifted up to an open window of the car, and handing a bouquet of rosebuds to him, said: “Flowers for the President!” Mr. Lincoln took the rosebuds, bent down and kissed the child, saying, “You’re a sweet little rosebud yourself. I hope your life will open into perpetual beauty and goodness.”
A kind face invites trust and help, showing the value of consistent kindness over time.
F
FACE, AN INVITING
This is from _The Boys’ World_:
A poor fellow in trouble, a stranger in a big city, and sick and destitute, passed aimlessly along the street, wondering what to do and where to go. Passing an office window, he looked up and caught sight of a man’s face. “I’ll go in there and speak to him--he looks so kind,” was the instant resolve. He went and found a friend indeed, whose kindness brought the chance to help himself, which the young man never forgot, and afterward sought to repay.
“He looks so kind.” Could there be a higher compliment? The man’s face was an open invitation to come in and confide and get help.
Without speaking a word he gave this invitation, which led to so much for the friendless stranger.
But do you suppose that this kind look grew in a night or a day or a week? Can a fine steel-engraving be finished in a few hours? It takes line by line, day after day. Things worth while are not of instantaneous accomplishment. Now think of it. When is the best time to begin, if the art of looking pleasant and the possession of a kind face be achieved?
Feelings are the soul’s fragrance, rising as worship and love toward God and others.
Feeling is a fountain that gushes life. Emotions in the soul are like songs, pouring forth from the birds in the thicket. Orange groves and peach orchards exhale perfume, and feeling is the soul’s fragrance, rising toward God and its fellows. The seas send up their whitest mists, and the soul ought to send up its emotions in whitest clouds of incense toward the throne of God and toward man’s soul.
— N. D. HILLIS
Irony between close friends shows affection, but outsiders may misunderstand it as hostility.
The fact is that the Carlyles habitually addrest one another with irony. It is no uncommon thing between intimates: it is rather a sign of the security of the affection which unites them. But if, by some unhappy accident, a third person who has no sense of humor hears this gay clash of keen words, and puts them down in dull print, and goes on to point out in his dull fashion that they do not sound affectionate, and are phrases by no means in common use among excellent married persons of average intellects, it is easy to see that the worst sort of mischief may readily be wrought.--W. J. DAWSON, “The Makers of English Prose.”
A cow’s motherly love led her to find comfort in her dead calf’s skin rug.
A cow’s melancholy over the loss of her calf led to a strange incident at the home of Josiah Brown, near Mount Carmel.
Brown owned a cow with a spotted calf which was so peculiarly marked that some time ago, when it was killed for veal, the skin was made into a rug. The mother cow was downcast and bellowed continually.
Mrs. Brown went into her front parlor, and there on the floor lay the cow, placidly licking the calfskin rug. It is supposed the cow approached the house and by chance saw the calfskin through the window, then quietly pushed the doors open and walked in. One barred door had been forced open by the cow’s horns.--Boston _Journal_.
A mother’s love motivates her to learn to read and write to communicate with her sons.
Not long ago a woman fifty years old went to a teacher in School No. 2, and with tears in her eyes, begged permission to sit down with the little ones five to six years old, that she might learn to read and write. She explained that she had two boys in the West, and desired to learn her letters that she might be able to communicate with them. Her daughter had done this for her, but three years ago the daughter died, and now the hungry-hearted mother was willing to make any sacrifice to keep in touch with her sons. So she entered school without telling any one, even her husband. Four weeks from the day she entered she was able to read through the primer, first reader, and almost through the second. Now she can write so any one can easily read every word. She learns ten new words at home every day, and always knows her lesson perfectly. She has learned to begin and end a letter, and it will not be long before she can write a love-letter--a genuine mother love-letter--to her boys. Through the goodness of my friend, I have in my possession a yellow sheet of paper containing one of her writing exercises. Reading between the lines, there is something inexpressibly touching about it. The words are such as may be found in the copy-book of any schoolboy, but the mother, with her hard hands and tender heart, as she copied the words imagined herself writing a letter to one of her sons. After writing her address and the date, this imaginary epistle, brimming with a real love, reads: “My dear son Hugh:
Be the matter what it may, Always speak the truth. If at work or if at play, Always speak the truth.”
Surely there is no ordinary clay in this vessel! She may not be able to understand the plan of her soul’s divine Potter, but a brave trust and a high hope reside at the center of her being.
— F. F. SHANNON
A mother’s love is more enduring and beautiful than flowers or a baby’s smile.
* * * * *
One calm, bright, sweet, sunshiny day an angel stole out of heaven and came down to this old world, and roamed field and forest, city and hamlet; and just as the sun went down he plumed his wings and said: “Now my visit is out, and I must go back to the world of light, but before I go I must gather some mementos of my visit here”; and he looked over into a beautiful flower-garden and said, “How lovely and fragrant these flowers are,” and he plucked the rarest roses, and made a bouquet, and said, “I see nothing more beautiful and fragrant than these; I will take them with me.” But he looked a little farther and there saw a little bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked babe, smiling into its mother’s face, and he said, “Oh, that baby’s smile is prettier than this bouquet; I will take that, too.” Then he looked just beyond the cradle, and there was a mother’s love pouring out like the gush of a river, toward the cradle and the baby, and he said, “Oh, that mother’s love is the prettiest thing I have seen on earth; I will carry that, too!” With the three treasures he winged his way to the pearly gates, and lit just on the outside, and said, “Before I go in I will examine my mementos,” and he looked at the flowers and they had withered; he looked at the baby’s smile and it had faded away; he looked at the mother’s love and there it was in all its pristine beauty and fragrance. He threw aside the withered flowers and the faded smile and winged his way through the gates and led all the hosts of heaven together and said, “Here is the only thing I found on earth that would keep its fragrance all the way to heaven--a mother’s love.”--“Popular Lectures of Sam P. Jones.”
A mother loon feigns injury to protect and lure her young away from danger.
See ARTIFICE; PRODIGAL, THE; WAYWARD, SEEKING THE.
MOTHER LOVE IN BIRDS
The loon, or great northern diver, is reported to have displayed her mother love and anxiety to a sportsman fishing in Sebago Lake in Maine: He surprized the mother with one young one near his canoe. She was employing every artifice to call the little one away, but the infant swam so near the boat that the fisherman took him aboard in his landing-net, and, holding him on his knee, gently stroked his downy coat, to the evident satisfaction of the youngster. Meanwhile the mother was in an agony of distress. At first, forgetting her native wildness and timidity in her mother love, she boldly approached the canoe, and, rising in the water till she appeared to stand upon it, furiously flapped her wings, uttering menacing cries. Finding this of no avail, she pretended that she was wounded, rolling over in the water and finally lying still as if dead, evidently to attract attention to herself and away from the young one. The fisherman, touched by these displays of motherly affection, put the young loon into the water, upon which the mother instantly came to life and again tried to entice her little one to go with her. (Text.)--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our Brother.”
A son vividly remembers his mother’s loving farewell, a lasting impression of love.
Lamar Fontaine, looking back after a long life of adventure, writes thus of a parting with his mother:
Those long-ago days now rise before me in all their vividness. As I pen these lines, nearing the seventy-seventh milestone in life’s rugged pathway, I feel the loving kiss yet burning on my lips where she prest it as she bade me “good-by.” There are some things in our life that time does not efface, and this is one of them. They are like the brand of red-hot iron that sears the tender hide of the bleating calf; once burned in, it lasts as long as life. I can see the last wave of her hand as she watched us move off across the prairie, and the picture is branded in my brain.--“My Life and My Lectures.”
A pleasant countenance influences others positively and reflects a joyful heart.
If one does not believe that his countenance adds to or detracts anything from the lives or expressions of others, let him pause for a moment before that now celebrated “Billiken.” It is almost impossible to look at the little imp and not smile. The Japanese teach their maids in the hotels, and those also in higher walks of life, the art of smiling. They are compelled to practise before a mirror. One can not stay long in Japan without being inoculated with the disposition to “look pleasant.” The “look pleasant, please,” of the photographer goes deeper than the photograph plate.
No one wants to associate long with an animated vinegar cruet. A disposition is easily guessed from the angle of the corners of the mouth; a disposition is molded by compelling those angles to turn up or down. If a merry heart maketh a glad countenance, it is also true that a glad countenance maketh a merry heart--in the one who has it and in the one who beholds it. “Iron sharpeneth iron. So a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend.”--_Baptist Commonwealth._
True strength often hides deep feelings, unlike outward sentimental displays.
Among Scotch qualities, the deepest rooted, apart from the fear of God, is sentiment. And yet we do not receive credit for it because we have not sentimentalism, which is the caricature and ghost of sentiment. The sentiment of the Scotch is of the heart and not of the lips. If I saw a couple of Scotchmen kissing each other good-by, I wouldn’t lend five shillings to either of them. It is not an uncommon thing to see such an exhibition among Italians. I do not blame them. They are as God made them and so they must be. People doubt whether we have any sentiment at all. Some think we are hard-hearted and cold-blooded. Our manner is less than genial and not effusive. Our misfortune is not to be able to express our feelings. This inability is allied to our strength; strong people conceal their feelings.
— JOHN WATSON
Ulysses Grant credited his mother’s sincere piety for his character and success.
Grant’s love for his family was one of the strongest and most attractive traits of his character. He never failed to appreciate the worth of his mother’s love, patience and wisdom during his early years at Georgetown. When she died in 1883, at Jersey City Heights, New Jersey, the General, when at the funeral, said to Dr. Howard Henderson, her pastor: “In the remarks which you make, speak of her only as a pure-minded, simple-hearted, earnest, Methodist Christian. Make no reference to me; she gained nothing by any position I have filled or honors that may have been paid me. I owe all this and all I am to her earnest, modest and sincere piety.”--NICHOLAS SMITH, “Grant, the Man of Mystery.”
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