Life, Love and the Grace of God

Friday, February 14, 2014

Valentines

My co-worker just had a beautiful bouquet of roses delivered to her by a florist. They are beautiful. Her husband called and ordered them for her, just for today. He always does something special like that for her.

Love is in the air.

Husband's buying their wives jewelry, flowers, taking them out to dinner at their favorite restaurant. It's a day to make that special someone in your life...well, feel special.

Some people don't have that.

Some are single.

Some just have a husband that doesn't care.

If you are one of those who are single or who have a husband that doesn't seem to care, I want you to know that there is Someone out there who loves you beyond your wildest imagination.

Jesus loves you.

And I love you.

Sending hugs out to all those who will not experience that special feeling today.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Colorless

It's winter in the Northeast.

It's cold.

It's white and dreary grey.

It is void of color.

It is colorless.

There is a lack of sunlight and it affects me every year. The lack of vibrancy drains me; I feel tired and my body hurts.

So I need to make the effort to see beauty

May the effort always be worth it.

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Love Others

But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”

Jesus said to him, ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’

On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

Matthew 22.34-40

These two commandments, the ones that Jesus said all the Law and the Prophets hang on, are based on love.

But what does this love mean? And how can we love others the way God wants us to if we don't even love ourselves the way He does.

This love, this act of loving, this loving myself stuff is what I've been working on and learning about recently.

I have to be honest with you here, do a little soul baring. I don't love myself. I have a very low opinion of myself.

And I don't believe I'm any different than a million other people out there who feel that they don't measure up or aren't worthy of....whatever. How can we possibly love ourselves when this world requires us to perform to a certain standard to be acceptable, especially when its a standard that not even God expects us to live up to.

I'm in the process of learning to love myself the way God loves me. It's really quite eye opening and freeing. Because in seeing how He loves me, I see how He loves others and it creates in me the ability to love others too.

But first comes loving Him. In doing that, I have found that I need to throw out every definition of love that I have learned over the years. And trust me, there are many definitions of love out there. In fact, each person has their own idea of what it looks like. And you can't blame them, their idea of love comes from a deep need that they have, a need that has never been met. This ties in with my thoughts on expectations. There is a need; we enter into a relationship and the need becomes an expectation of the other person to meet.

But I digress....(I do that a lot)

The only definition of love that matters is God's. And only He can reveal it to us.

I think that may be a key; understanding who God made us to be, our unique personality and gifts. But what is the hardest thing to grasp is that God loves us in an incredible way. He loves us perfectly and completely and there is nothing we have done or could possibly do to earn that love.

We need to stand confident in that love. We need to believe that His love for us is true.

What does a true Christian look like?

I think before we can answer that, we need to understand just what it means to be a Christian…how did being a Christian even become possible? And for any of this to make sense, we need to believe that there is a Creator and this is where my thoughts will start from, because I believe there is a Creator of this crazy and miraculous world; and I believe that Creator to be God. We can talk about that another time if you’d like.

It all starts with our complete imperfectness. We just can’t be completely perfect, doing the right thing, loving, forgiving and attaining a state of holiness. Oh we can try and the majority of us do our best, but it’s just not enough; not enough when at the end of our time here on earth we must stand before a most Holy and Perfect God. A God whose light shines so brightly and perfectly that we are unable to stand in His presence.

He knew this. He created us. He loves us. And because of this love, He made a way for us to stand in His presence. He sent His Son Jesus to die for us on a cross.

Think about this….who does that? Who sacrifices their only child for a person who curses, cheats & steals? Who hurts others and thinks only of themselves? Who watches these terrible things that are happening here on earth and thinks “They will never be perfect enough to join me in Heaven, so I will make a way for them to join me…because I love them so much and want them with me forever.”

It’s a documented fact that Jesus existed and that He died on a cross a completely innocent man. That cannot be denied.

Just thinking about it…sends chills through my bones and I sit in awe of the Man who could allow that to happen to himself. Who, while hanging there on a cross (and if you haven’t read up on what a crucifixion is actually like, you really need to), offered love and forgiveness to a man hanging next to him. Could I offer myself like that? I could for my children, but for someone I didn’t even know….who didn’t even exist yet? Um, let’s be honest, none of us would.

And this man, Jesus, simply asked that, in return, we believe, repent and follow Him.

That is how we become a Christian and how our journey with Him begins. And it is a journey. We start with our messy selves, then He comes along side us and encourages us, changes us and we begin to see the world in a different way. Our hearts change. This change can take a while sometimes, because we still live in this crazy world and it affects us. But little by little, we begin to see others the way God sees us. As His beloved creation, needing love, patience, lots of grace and forgiveness, sometimes a little discipline to get us back on the right track (because, seriously….we make mistakes don’t we?), and a whole lot of mercy.

It doesn’t make us happy to see others in pain, it makes us happy to help others who are in need. We become so thankful once we understand what Jesus did for us, that we want to make HIM proud and live in a way that is pleasing to HIM…not ourselves or anyone else. We die a bit, our selfishness becomes less and we begin to think about others, not caring about our own needs but more about others. Those words in red in our bibles become life to us, a way to live, a way to give and serve others.

It’s not about rules and making sure that everyone around you lives by these rules. Because that would make us SELF-righteous and that’s what the Pharisees in Jesus’ time were all about…rules and “look how good we are and how bad you are.”

So, to me, a Christian looks like someone who loves others even when they are unlovable. A Christian understands that they themselves are not perfect and would never judge another when they screw up. Their trust in God goes beyond human understanding and they feel safe in that trust. Safe enough to go and hold out a hand to those less fortunate, safe enough to seek out the good in the worst of people and encourage them to be better, but love them even when they fail. A Christian forgives over and over again, because they understand how much they’ve been forgiven. A Christian cries when they see an injustice done because it hurts their heart to see someone else hurting. And sometimes, a Christian has to stand up to what God says is wrong and speak the truth, no matter what the consequences are, but that’s never done in malice or with condemnation. Because with truth, a way to repentance must always be offered in love and grace.

Others may not believe the way I do, but I believe that to be their choice and I will love them no matter what. Because Jesus loved me enough to die for me when I was not so nice a person, how could I do any less.

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Fresh Starts

A new year has begun. With it, many have decided to make resolutions for change; I am no different.

Did you notice the change in my blog? Resolution #1 accomplished!

Now on to the others:

~ Be kinder to my body.

~ Fill my mind with creative and lovely thoughts.

~ Get out and live life...even if I have to do it alone.

Notice that there isn't anything specific, like "stop eating cake" (who wants to do that?). I've decided that my resolutions this year are not going to be about any one specific thing, but more about a way to live.

So I have started. This morning I opened my "One Year Wisdom for Women" devotional by Debbi Bryson and began my one year reading plan, which Debbi so thoughtfully put at the bottom of each of her devotionals...thank you!

There was a quote in todays devotion by WC Fields as follows:

"Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live fish to go against the flow."

No more floating downstream for this girl, I want to live!

So here's to day one of 2014.