May 09, 2012
Leave a Message
The first thing many of us do when we come into our house is to check
the answering machine for messages. I have friends who, when they don’t have
any messages will joke, “Well, I guess
nobody loves us.” But when there are no messages, they also breathe a sigh
of relief that there is no crisis in the family to worry about. I have to
wonder about the messages we leave for God. Do I send as many messages of love
as I do for crisis intervention?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----The prospect of loving everyone confused me for many years. There are a lot of unlovable people in this world. Of course Hitler and Bin Laden come to mind first, although many liberals will want us first to think of G. W. Bush and Dick Cheney. We all know people who refuse to get along with anyone, people who use others like tools, and people with an endless bounty of detestable habits. Yet God tells us to love them. To me, His command is not a demonstration of the impossibility of man’s ability to love; it is a clue about what love really is.
-----I love my wife and family and friends with heart felt love. I love God with heartfelt love, too. But having taken the clue and investigated the Word and pondered the basics of things carefully, the heart felt part is not love’s core element; I’ve come to honestly believe. Indeed I now consider the core and substance of love to be the strong inclination that produces effort towards good for the loved one even if the only effort doable can be prayer. In short, love is the quest for what‘s right guided by what‘s true.
-----I want to be a good lover. But two things deny my desires and disappoint me: my own selfishness and my loved ones not asking me for the help I can give. God does not have any selfishness. But He is made of the desire for us to turn to Him for help. He knows that our entire existence is a crisis. So He sent first Jesus, then the Holy Spirit to make the door and the help for taking our burdens for Him to bear. Being made of love, it is His desire to bear them. Then loving Him will include presenting them. I see no difference between sending Him a message of love and calling out for His crisis intervention.
-----So I’ve become convinced that it is not at the point of prayer where reducing message for needed intervention is appropriate. If there is crisis, God is not happy to not hear us call on Him. Granted that this life is a constant stream of crises, our klutziness causes its normally bearable amounts to clump into unbearable little mountains about which, of course, God will want to hear. The real way to reduce the messages of need and still be loving God is to reduce our clump causing klutziness instead.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment