Birds, Beans, and Tough Love

Today I saw a hummingbird on my feeder :- )

Fountian outside the Salem Public Library

I drove to Salem to visit a record shop.

I picked beans in the garden for supper tonight.

And I thought about love. People toss this word around freely. But, there is only one person who really knows what it means, because He is love—Jesus .  For those brave enough to find out what He says about it read Matthew 5, 6, and 7.  It’s crazy-scary, radical stuff.

When we love, it is an extension of God (who is Love) to the other. If you love someone, then you get the privilege of being the bridge between God and the other.  Trust me on this: you will get walked on.

In order to love you must give yourself up to God and the other. Jesus puts it this way: you must be willing to die to self. Because, the other does not stand a chance against you in this dog eat dog world. And, no one stands a chance against God.  (But, of course, we don’t really believe this today, do we?) 

Once upon a time people did not think that God was just an idea--something thought up to help them feel good about themselves and the world around them. They believed He was real, powerful, active, and present--which influenced the way they lived, thought, and spoke.

Have you ever noticed that people are willing to send money to feed children in Africa, but they won’t reach into their pocket for the person standing right in front of them? Instead they say things like, “Oh, I’m so sorry you’re going through a hard time. I’ll pray for you.” They want the good feeling that comes from charity, but they don’t want to be involved.

I once had a friend who was sad because she wished that she knew what God wanted her to do with her life. She wanted a “ministry”. She wanted to please God by doing something big for Him. I was confused. “Why are you worried about doing something big, when we are called to love our neighbor and we can’t even do that?” I asked. 

Most of us can’t even love our families. When it becomes painful to love, when we are getting walked on hard, when the strength of the “bridge” is tested by hard times, difficult problems, ill-treatment, and unhappiness we disconnect from them and revert to self-love.

Self-love is a modern epidemic. And it’s a huge market, too, with books, seminars, and programs promoting self-everything. As if any one of us needs to be encouraged to be more selfish!

This is what the Bible has to say about self-love:  But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:1-5a) 

The way of love is hard. If you choose it you will have a tough path to walk. People will think you are stupid, weak, a push-over when they see you loving difficult people who treat you unkindly, and they will say, “You shouldn’t put up with that.”  They don’t realize that they are difficult and unkind, too--that we all are. Every. Single. One.  

I heard a famous psychologist say that people live what they know. I want to know love, don’t you?

Good friends:  Elvis and Indiana Jones :- )