Speaker: Dr. Harold J. Sala | Series: Guidelines For Living | Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her. Ephesians 5:25

When it became apparent that his wife had Alzheimer’s, Dr. Robertson McQuilkin made a decision that few men would have made. He resigned as President of Columbia International University to devote all of his time taking care of her. It wasn’t logical because men are driven by accomplishment in life. When a man suffers a serious illness, statistics are that four out of five women will stay by their husbands, but when the roles are reversed and it is the woman who is stricken with affliction, four of five men abandon her.

But not Robertson McQuilkin. In the 25 years that he was her primary caretaker, God taught him many lessons about commitment, love, and how our culture is out of harmony with the manner in which God loves and cares for us as his children.

Frankly, he’s one of the men I most admire because he not only was there for her in times of sickness and times of great stress, but he shared his heart with us in such a manner that we see Christ in his actions.

In the early years of her illness, Dr. McQuilkin tried to go to his office and fulfill his responsibility while a caregiver stayed with his wife. He reflects, “During those two years it became increasingly difficult to keep Muriel home. As soon as I left, she would take out after me. With me, she was content; without me, she was distressed, sometimes terror stricken. The walk to school is a mile round trip. She would make that trip as many as ten times a day. Sometimes at night, when I helped her undress, I found bloody feet. When I told our family doctor, he choked up. ‘Such love,’ he said simply. Then after a moment, ‘I have a theory that the characteristics developed across the years come out at times like these.’” Then Dr. McQuilkin added, “I wish I loved God like that-desperate to be near him at all times. Thus she teaches me, day by day.” When speech began to fail her, one of the last phrases that Muriel could say was, “I love you.” One of the most difficult things for this devoted husband was that as the affliction ran its course, Muriel couldn’t respond. “I would love her,” he said, “but she couldn’t love me back, and that’s a painful thing.”

He often thought, “’Lord is that the way it is between you and me? You pouring out your love and care so consciously, and what do you get back—a brief salute in the morning, we connect, grumbling when I don’t get what I want, when you don’t do it in the way I like?” How sad for him.”

It was his integrity and love for his wife that led him to give up a career—not a sense of guilt or economic necessity. In reflecting on what the life of this man taught that could never be learned in a classroom, I’m immediately drawn to the commitment of his love that was completely unrequited. So much of our love is “tit for tat.” In other words, when you love me, then I respond in kind, but when you stop returning my love, the deal’s off.

Have you ever considered what might happen should God choose to love us in the way we love each other and usually Him as well? Paul put it that God demonstrated His love for us while we were yet sinners in that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).

Robertson McQuilkin lived out the reality that love is a deep commitment, a decision to care that abides unmovable, regardless of the temperature of the heart that rises and falls with our emotions and feeling.

Resource reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-8.