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What is True Love and What Does it Look Like?

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Life is Full of Difficulties, But Love Makes It Easier to Get Through Them

We all experience difficulties in life. Some are more severe than others. Sometimes these situations can suck us down into depression and we just want to hide under the covers and stay there.

This is how Naomi felt after their family moved because where they lived was experiencing a famine. Then after moving, her husband died. Her sons both married and then a few years later they died. This was a lot to handle.

Then Naomi heard that the famine was over. She still had family there…so she decided to move back. Her daughters-in-law decided to go with her. Naomi told them they would be better off staying there with their families. Ruth, one of the daughters-in-law was having none of it. She loved Naomi and was going with her.

Ruth told Naomi, “Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you sleep, I will sleep. Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. Where you die, I will die, and that is where I will be buried.” Ruth 1:1-18

Life is full of difficult decisions, but they are much easier when we have the support from people we love and that love us.

This is what true love looks like.

Too often, we associate love with romance and forget how much more it is. It is so much more than the romantic love. There are four types of love –

  • Affection – Affection covers an array of loves. The care of mother to baby is a picture of affection. It relies on the expected and the familiar. “Affection almost slinks or seeps through our lives. It lives with humble, un-dress, private things; soft slippers, old clothes, old jokes, the thump of a sleepy dog’s tail on the kitchen floor, the sound of a sewing-machine…”
  • Friendship – Friendship is the love dismissed. “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves, the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.”  Friendships have begun faith movements, developed entire areas of thought, and contributed to many projects from art to business.
  • Romantic – Different than friendship, lovers, “are always talking to one another about their love” and “are normally face to face, absorbed in each other.” There’s a reason Scripture teaches this bond of man and woman, from Genesis onward, is the picture of God’s love for the world, Christ for his bride, the church. When we discover afresh that romance is more deeply set than the drivel served up by our culture, then we will more rightly hold our spouse in the model of unconditional love.
  • Charity – This is our chief aim, the unconditional love of the Father given to us through his Son. Affection, friendship and romantic love are each the training ground for charity to grow. We are made to love and we are in want of it. If we play it safe, we are not living out the Gospel, but burying the coin in the safe ground, as the parable says. We are taught in the Scripture to love those who are broken, not for some vague humanitarian effort, but to make disciples of all nations, “baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Jesus is love. He is what true love looks like.

After Naomi and Ruth got home, Ruth married Boaz, they had a son named Obed, who was the father of Jesse and Jesse was the father of David. This is the family of Jesus. The love that Naomi and Ruth shared changed their lives and the world’s.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

We come from a long line of Love. Go and share that love with everyone you can.

As Long as We’re Alive Our Picture is Still Being Painted

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And It Will Be a Beautiful Picture When It’s Finished

This past Sunday was Palm Sunday. This is the Sunday before Easter and commemorates Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Mark 11:1-11

As Jesus rode into town people spread coats and palm branches on the road in front of Him. This is the way the people would celebrate the arrival of kings and victorious leaders. His followers expected Him to take over the Roman government and begin ruling like David.

Looking back, we know this did not turn out as Jesus’ followers expected.

They had a picture in their minds of how they thought things would go and couldn’t see past that.

We do the same thing. We get a picture of what we think our lives are going to be…and we know how that turns out.

A man was scrolling through programs on TV when he stopped to watch a man doing a painting. He thought the painting has finished. It looked amazing and he didn’t think it could look any better. As he watched, the artist took a brush with black paint and smeared it right through the middle. It looked like it was ruined. As he continued watching, the artist used the black paint to make the painting better than it had been.

Leave the painting of your life to the Master Craftsman and it will turn out beautiful.

This is similar to our lives. Sometimes there is black paint smeared through the middle. If we will just leave the painting to the Master Artist, our lives will be better than we thought they ever could be.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t have a part to play in the painting of our life picture…it just means that we need to know who the Master Craftsman is. Keep painting as long as you live.

How Will You Ever Get Where You Want by Walking in One Spot?

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The Only Way to Get There is to Step Off the Treadmill

Did you know that treadmills were designed for punishment? This explains a lot.

In 1818 an English engineer named Sir William Cubitt, who was the son of a miller. Noting idle prisoners at Bury St Edmunds, he proposed using their muscle power to both cure their idleness and produce useful work.

Cubitt’s treadmills for punishment usually rotated around a horizontal axis, requiring the user to step upwards, like walking up an endless staircase. Those punished walked around the outside of the wheel holding a horizontal handrail for stability.

Punishment treadmills remained in use until the second half of the 19th century; they were typically paddle wheels with twenty-four steps around a six-foot cylinder. Several prisoners stood side-by-side on a wheel, and had to work six or more hours a day, effectively climbing 5,000 to 14,000 vertical feet. While the purpose was mainly punitive, the most infamous mill at Brixton Prison was installed in 1821 and used to grind grain to supplement an existing windmill which Cubitt had previously installed nearby.

This continuous repetitive act of walking and walking and never getting anywhere does sound like a little torturous.

Many people feel like their lives are a treadmill.

We’ve all felt this feeling of being tired of the routine of life. There is a German word for this. Lebensmüde is a compound noun made up of the words Leben (life) and müde (tired). It therefore translates to ‘life tired’. This is not how we are to be living our lives.

We all have a purpose and when we live life ignoring it we find ourselves slugging along unaware or ignoring our surroundings. The longer we walk back and forth without a destination the deeper the rut gets. When it gets deep enough, we can’t see out. It’s been said that “A rut is a grave with both ends kicked out.” It’s up to us to not get stuck in a rut.

Something is wrong when ‘life-tired’ becomes the norm.

We all have a purpose. Something that we were meant to do. If you don’t know what it is, you need to check with God. Find out what He wants you to do and then stop walking around in circles and move toward it.

Knowing our purpose is not some form of magic. It’s a direction to a destination. It’s up to us to find it and start walking.

We Want a World Without Suffering

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There is No Such Thing, This Side of Heaven

There is no question that the world has plenty of examples of suffering. Why, we ask, would a loving God permit pain and suffering? Ultimately, this is a question that you will have to ask Him.

Suffering is critical to us becoming who we’re meant to be.

If everything was easy, we would not be able to accomplish all that we are supposed to. Nature is full of examples of this.

When a baby giraffe is born it falls 4’-5’ feet to the ground. Then as it is trying to get up the mother kicks it, again and again. Working through this struggle the baby giraffe learns to get up. In a matter of hours, it’s prepared for lions, hyenas and wild dogs.

Or, what about butterflies pushing to get out of the cocoon they find themselves wrapped up in. We’ve all heard about someone helping a butterfly with this process and then the butterfly’s ends up being too weak to fly.

We are no different. Sure, it would be nice if we didn’t have to suffer, but this would leave us weak and unprepared for life. Suffering makes us stronger.

While everything else follows its instincts and does what comes naturally…we humans think and think and think… Rather than embracing the struggles and learning and growing, we want things to be easy. We think we know better than God how things should be.

Easy leads to a life void of meaning.

In Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he outlines his theory of logotherapy. Logotherapy says, “The primary motivational force of an individual is to find meaning in life.” This theory helped him to survive his Holocaust experience. Being in a concentration camp as a Jew…that’s real suffering.

Frankl says there are three things needed to experience a life of meaning:

  • Finding a worthwhile project to work on and working on it
  • Understanding suffering and viewing it from a productive perspective
  • Working through life’s challenges with other people

Too much of the time people drift through life accepting things as they are rather than doing something about them. We have more control than that. Sure, there are things that happen that are out of our control but, we have way more control than we choose to believe.

God knew what he was doing when He created the world. He knew we would need help, so He sent Jesus. Include Jesus in your group when you’re working through life’s challenges.

We can choose to embrace life’s difficulties and be stronger…or not!

How To Get Control Of Your Life

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Budget Your Time…You Have a Limited Amount

For years I have heard people express frustration with organizing and managing their schedules and “to do” lists. For years I was one of those people. These issues are multiplied when running a business.

Not that I have it all figured out but, I’m closer than I’ve ever been.

The question of what the best tool to use to manage scheduling and “to do” lists, has come up a lot lately. Most people are looking for a simple app or tool that will magically do it all.

There is nothing that will miraculously do this for you.

I’ve been refining my scheduling system for decades. Trying different things, starting with paper calendars, notebooks and notes on scrap paper. Now it’s all on my computer. I like my system way better now than before (I still use some paper for quick notes). However, it doesn’t do the work without my involvement.

Here’s the thing, most of us have way more things on our lists than there is time to get them done. Or we forget to do something because it wasn’t written down. Or the paper it was written on got lost in a stack of papers. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and forget or misplace reminders.

Keeping track of things is the most important part of being organized.

We naturally want order in our lives. We want to be in control. The problem is we live in a world of chaos. Organization is a weapon to fight against the chaos. The more organized we are the less chaos there is.

What does organization look like? According to Webster, organization is, “the act or process of organizing or being organized.” Organize is, “to form into a coherent unity or functioning whole, to arrange by systematic planning and united effort.” This sounds good to me.

Having OCD, Organizational Compulsive Disorder, I organize at a level more intense and detailed than most.

My system works for me. This doesn’t mean that everyone’s has to be at this level. Some people feel restricted by a schedule. Just like some people feel that a budget restricts them financially.

I find both to be freeing.

My detailed system allows me to know what to expect. Not to mention it keeps me motivated to get more done. I used to struggle to determine what thing should be done next.

It is a combination of lists and calendars. My “to do” lists are a place to write things down so that they aren’t forgotten. I then prioritize the things that need to be done to reach goals. Each task gets an amount of time and then put on the calendar. The calendar allows me to see the tasks as a block of time and not just an item on a list.

A calendar works like a “budget” for time.

It is easy to let things slide if you aren’t intentional about planning. The most important thing is to know yourself and figure out what works for you.

Next week I will open up my toolbox and show you the tools I use to keep control of my life and minimize the chaos.

No One Ever Said Life Would Be Fair

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That Doesn’t Mean That We Have to Be Negative

The Scripture used in Pastor Lee’s message this week is one that I used to struggle with. In Matthew 20:1-16 Jesus tells His followers a story about a man who hired people to work in his vineyard. Several times throughout the day the landowner went back and hired more people. Even as the day was coming to an end, he hired more people. When it came time to pay the workers…everyone was paid the same.

The workers that worked all day, thought this unfair.

From a spiritual perspective the story makes sense. Regardless of when we accept Jesus’ offer to an enteral life, we will receive the same reward as those who started the journey much earlier. Just like in Jesus’ story…

All received what they had been promised.

The workers in the story are looking at this from a selfish, what’s in it for me, point of view. How much more content they would be if they focused on the good rather than seeing the negative.

They had an opportunity to earn money. They could now feed their family. The additional workers shared the work and eased their load. Every one of the workers was able to feed their families. This opportunity to work made for a better community in which to live.

We can choose what we focus on.

Actual photo of accident

In 1981 a car crashed through the wall of 4-year-old Nicole Allshouse’s bedroom while she slept, trapping her between the car and a closet. She spent her entire childhood in and out of hospitals. She will be the first to tell you that “Life is not fair”.

“I say all of this to remind you, life is not fair. It is hard. And sometimes, it downright stinks. The challenges we all face are massive. I remember spending holidays in a hospital bed and pulling out chunks of my hair because I had no idea at that age how to cope with the intense pain. I remember throwing up after every operation from the morphine and struggling to come out of the foggy daze associated with it.  I remember my elbows bleeding and scabbing over because I was forced to crawl on them when my legs would not move. I remember the first time I was old enough to realize the scope of my scars and how deformed my left knee appeared.”

However, Nicole choose to see the positive.

“What I do have, is experience in surviving. And I am here to tell you, life is not fair.  No one ever said it would be. You have got to stop feeling sorry for yourself.  Let me say that again, you MUST stop feeling sorry for yourself.  You are wasting too much energy. And too much time. Feeling sorry for yourself will not get that job back or fix your broken marriage. Feeling sorry for yourself will not cure your illness or take off that weight. Feeling sorry for yourself will not make haters go away and will not create disposable income. Feeling sorry for yourself will not make the pain any better. You have to fight through the pain.  And the key to fighting through the pain, is to have a laser like focus on the good things in your life.”

We need to be thankful for our blessings.

The alternative is to feel sorry for ourselves. Too often, people try to build themselves up by tearing others down. The Russian parable called Boris’s goat is a good example of this.

Two men, Boris and Ivan live almost identical lives. Both married. Both work. Both have two kids. The only difference is Boris has a goat and Ivan does not. One day Ivan is walking down the road when he comes across a lamp. He rubs the lamp and a genie pops out. The genie says, “I will grant you one wish. What is it you desire?” Ivan thinks for a moment and says, “I want Boris’s goat to die.”

Ivan choose to look at things negatively rather than positively. We can choose how we will see the world. The view we choose will affect that world.

Choose to see the world through God’s eyes.

What is it Like to be Alive?

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This is a Question as Old as Time

There is a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. Many people feel like what they’re going through really isn’t living. Life has always been full of difficulties. It’s up to us to decide if we’re going to live life or curl up in a corner.

A woman whose son was gone to war received a visit from the Army, informing her that her son had been killed by a land mine. She was uncontrollably distraught for days. On the third day she received a phone call…it was her son. HE WAS ALIVE! The earlier message was a mistake, the son she thought was dead was alive.

This is the Easter message…SURPRISE HE’S ALIVE!

When the women went to Jesus’ tomb they were filled with grief and sadness. They had watch Jesus die on the cross just a few days earlier. When they got there the tomb was empty and an angel told them that He was alive. They were very happy. The angel told them to go spread the word and they did. Matthew 28:1-10.

HALLELUJAH HE’S ALIVE!

We don’t understand the value of LIFE until we are sitting by a tomb. We don’t understand the value of LOVE until we have stared hatred in the face. We don’t understand the power of HOPE until we have experienced the darkest despair.

Easter is all about life. God’s grace is found in the empty tomb. It is the victory HOPE over despair, LOVE over hate and LIFE over death. For Christians, every day is Easter.

Jesus is King of kings and Lord of lords. Hallelujah, He shall rein for ever and ever.

Check out Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus here. World’s Largest Virtual Hallelujah Chorus

Life is Like Removing a Clothesline Pole

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You Never Know How Big the Hole Will be Until You Start Digging

Have you ever had a vision for something that you weren’t sure what needed to be done or how to do it? If you’re not careful planning and analyzing can lead to overthinking and overthinking is just another word for procrastination.

Overthinking has kept me from accomplishing things too many times.

My assistant Cathleen had a vision for creating a safe place in the small back yard for her young daughter to play. This vision included a trampoline and swing set. The problem was two clothesline poles in the way. Compounding the problem…they were set in concrete.

She started digging around the first one. She had no way of knowing how much concrete was around the pipe or how deep in the ground it went. After a few days of digging and more concrete than expected, the hole was getting pretty big.

She did not let overthinking stop her from moving forward with her vision. 

Some people would say that in her youth and lack of experience she bit off more than she could chew. She could have done more research and procrastinated over this for a while. She could have saved up some money and hired a professional. She did neither…she started digging.

The importance of getting this play area ready for Luna was the determination she needed to push toward the vision. After digging for a while, she could have quit, but she didn’t. She had an objective, she knew what it was, and nothing was going to stop her.

Determination and action kept her moving forward.

There was a point in the process where it was evident that she wasn’t physically going to get the pipe and concrete out of the hole. After some re-evaluation and research, it was decided to cut the pipes off. She needed some help with this, and I happened to have a cutting torch. After this was done the dirt was put back in the hole burying the concrete and a trampoline was set up.

Cathleen’s project is no different than any other endeavor we face. It may turn out to be bigger and more time consuming than expected. There may be unanticipated circumstances that raise questions and create doubt. We may need to incorporate some help to achieve our goal.

Moving forward and not overthinking is critical to getting things done.

By nature, I’m a thinker and planner. Too often I procrastinate by overthinking everything. This is compounded by a long list of things to think about and plan for. There are so many people to help and things that need done. It’s easy to be overwhelmed when standing in the shadow of a huge mountain that needs moved.

What makes the mountain ominous is trying to figure out every detail that we’re going to encounter before we start. Are we going to run into rock, how much, what will we do with it when we do…and on and on? Thinking keeps us from moving anything and the mountain just stands there.

When Cathleen saw her vision of Luna’s place to play, she started digging. She didn’t let the size of the mountain stop her. We need to take a lesson from Cathleen.

This isn’t to say that planning isn’t important, because it is. If we don’t have a plan the vision gets stuck as a dream. Like building any construction project, you need to have a plan, but nothing gets built until we move some dirt.

If you’re going to achieve your goals and accomplish your vision, you need to do some shoveling today.

Knowing the End of One Story in the Beginning Is A Good Thing

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How You Read Other Stories Is A Personal Preference

There are two differing opinions of how to read a book. Some people start by reading the last chapter first to see how the story ends. Others will start at the beginning and not read the end until…well the end. Whichever way you want to read is fine except for one specific story.

There is one story that you should know how it ends when it begins.

Knowing how the story in the Bible ends is critical to our own story and how it will end. We are all living our own stories surrounded by other stories in the middle of a bigger story. These stories are being written continuously every minute of every day.

We can write our story however we want, it’s up to us.

The important thing to remember is the importance of choosing to write it rather than letting someone else write it for us. Pastor Lee referred to two different stories in his message Sunday.

The first you are probably familiar with; it’s the story of Rip Van Winkle. In this story, written by Washington Irving and published in 1819, Rip Van Winkle falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. When he wakes up 20 years later, he has slept through the American Revolution.

After he goes back to town everything has changed. His wife is dead, his kids are grown, the country now has a President rather than a King. Nothing is as it was when he went to sleep.

Too much of the time we sleep through life and let it happen to us.

The other story that he told was less popular. It’s a story about a Mexican priest, Sergio Gutierrez Benitez, who supported an orphanage for 23 years as the masked professional wrestler, “Friar Storm”. The La Casa Hogar orphanage became home to 270 children. Father Benitez chose to write his story, taking an active role and changing other people’s stories at the same time.

We can let life happen to us, or we can choose the life we want to happen.

Too often when we choose to write our own story, we forget to check with the Author of all stories to see if we are following His outline. Too often we don’t listen before we think or speak. We assume we have everything figured out and just start blabbering. This isn’t the best way to write a story.

Just like Peter, in Matthew 17:1-5 when he was on the mountain with Jesus. While he, James, and John were standing there Jesus became white as light and Moses and Elijah appeared. Then Peter began talking and making suggestions to Jesus without listening. While he was talking, God spoke and said, “This is my Son…Listen to Him!”

We need to be quiet and listen.

We have control over how our story is going to be written. Listen to God, study your life’s outline and right a good story.

What Are the Rules That You Live By?

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They Will Be the Building Blocks in Your Life’s Foundation

 

 

 

We all make choices everyday about how we will live our lives and how we will treat those around us.


Often, we adults make things more complicated than they need to be and it’s really pretty simple. All we really need to know we learned in kindergarten, just ask Robert Fulghum.

 


Here’s a partial list:

  • Share everything.
  • Play fair.
  • Don’t hit people.
  • Put things back where you found them.
  • CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
  • Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
  • Say you’re SORRY when you HURT somebody.
  • Wash your hands before you eat.
  • Flush.
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.

 


These are just good common-sense things that will be great foundation blocks for building a better world.

 


We can make a big difference by doing small things, even though at the time it might not seem like it. The story of the young boy and the starfish is a good parable that makes this point.

 


“One day, an old man was walking along a beach that was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed ashore by the high tide. As he walked, he came upon a young boy who was eagerly throwing the starfish back into the ocean, one by one.
Puzzled, the man looked at the boy and asked what he was doing. Without looking up from his task, the boy simply replied, “I’m saving these starfish, Sir”.
The old man chuckled aloud, “Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?”
The boy picked up a starfish, gently tossed it into the water and turning to the man, said, “I made a difference to that one!”

 

 

Use good blocks for building your life.