For the Love - What's Next

So - we finished the For the Love series - or rather - we only have as much wrap-up as we want to under take left.

Occasionally over Lent I had a conversation or two with some of you about the series - and a few conversations with others not following the series - but who volunteered opinions on it. Reflecting back on those conversations - I'd group them into three categories: some folks responded with "Yay! God's love", some with "where's the obedience!" and some just kind of waited ... perhaps to see what was coming next. 

Well ... what is next then?

If you know we just celebrated Easter - then you know that Easter - appeared to be an end on Good Friday (renamed, I imagine, quite a while after the first Easter - don't you think?) - but was probably referred to by the disciples as "The Worst Day In History". I imagine that when they mentioned amongst themselves - they paused to swallow golf-balls, deal with their sudden "allergy eyes" and so on.

Ahem.

But by Monday morning - if not Sunday lunch - it was pretty clear - things were different - and Easter was a glorious beginning.

Whether you've been following Jesus "practically forever" or - two minutes ago - there's always a new beginning available. 

First - I want to clarify - that I believe we're in that third response group ... the group waiting to see what's next. We're not only in the "Yay! God's Love" group. We're not merely in the "where's the obedience group. We're in the group that feeds our souls nourishingly full at every "meal" - spiritually I mean of course - and then digests all day and lets God's love work through every cell of our being - and then obedience - is the uh ... er ... ahem ... natural by-product you might say.

Don't think about that too much.

And yet - please, please do realize that this really is how it works best. It's just a no good, horrifically disastrous mess if we try to aim at obedience by feasting on obedience itself instead of love. It just works so much better ... not actually totally and inescapably automatically with us spiritually ... but more-so-ish. 

At least I do truly, truly believe that this is how it worked before the fall. 

Since then though, things are well, just wonky. We don't "automatically" get obedience - we have to work at it. 

But - I'll argue that love is still the ideal fuel.

So - now all fueled up on Love - what's next. 

Well ... what is next for you? 

In all likelihood - if you read this say ... today at some point ... then the "next" will come up for you when life starts to happen and you pause, and wonder "hmmm ... how do I do that?" Maybe that will happen around an unexpected expense, or an unexpected hic-up in some key relationship, or maybe you'll start to catch a cold, or maybe your "next" will happen in that part of the day when you're not at work, and not in bed - and you get to choose what to do with your time.

Whatever your next is - the fuller you are with God's love - the more happily nourished your soul is with God's love - the easier it will be to include Him - authentically, "naturally", and helpfully in that "next. Full of Love - secure in your supply of it - your "next meal" so to speak - it's easiest (though surely not easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy). It'll never be effortless - or thoughtless to include God in our "nexts" - but it'll be easier to do so freshly feasted on love than it will under any other circumstance. 

Or at least - that is my experience - and I believe that is just my experience with what Scripture teaches.

So - full of God's love, we dialog with God (again - so to speak) as we enter that unexpected expense, the relationship hic-up, the cold, the down-time - and there it is ... our moment!

I used to imagine my moment would be when you hear that angel chorus start to sing opera and you receive some long-lost letter from the Apostle Paul and you're off to the races on some grand adventure.

Alas - that would be the spiritual equivalent of pushing back from your Easter feast and trotting out the door on a marathon.

Uf-DAH!

No thanks!

Surely - if you've trained to run a marathon then the whole thing is a different matter though isn't it.

One of my first apps on my iPod touch - like - 10 or more years ago - was an app called "Couch to 5k" - designed to gradually grow your cardio-vascular stamina so you could "run" a 5k.

Well ... these moments listed up above - are like the initial 30-60 second bursts of "running" (read - jogging while panting) - on my old app. Not as sexy as running a marathon - but if you break it down - a marathon is just so many (sooooo many) minutes of jogging - all strung together. These moments are the exact same to our spiritual marathon. And sometimes - they leave you just as winded - though - I'd argue - rarely without a much much bigger sense of accomplishment when you complete them well.

The importance - the value of the fuel of God's love in those moments become soooo crucial. It's in those "next" moments that we actually do the heavy lifting of our walk with God. It's in those moments that we get to choose. Choose to trust and make the best choices we can about the unexpected expense, the relationship hic-up, the cold, the down-time. 

In those moments when you have the whole world of options before you to choose from - including all God's ideals laid out in scripture, all your life-time's worth of habits, and all the notions (and sometimes nonsense) sprinkled in by media - we do what we do. 

And then it's done.

It can't be undone. 

All we can do is get ready for the next moment.

Going into those moments fueled on God's love - you're flush in all the things that give you courage - namely - love, grace, hope, encouragement ... and more besides - so you're in as good a shape as possible to make that leap forward. 

I don't know about you - but sometimes I do okay. Sometimes ... not so much. Sometimes - all too rarely, I'm tempted to think at times, I look back at what I did and think "Wow!" and that's a good thing. 

Whether I'm horrified or elated or just "meh" - again - God's love is the best way to process the process. Anything else - and you'll end up miserable - either in your soul or to be around.

So - what does that mean for our "For the Love" Lenten series? 

Well - I'd recommend that you go back to your two or three favorite verses. Maybe write them out where you can see them regularly. Maybe think about what it is about the particular ones you chose that you like so much. 

Graham Cooke says that the scriptures that speak to you - speak to you because they speak to why God made you - and made you just the way He made you. They're your inheritance with Him. 

Quite a thought.

You might even want to meditate on those two or three verses. Maybe you want to even memorize your favorite -and then meditate on it some more. You might find that memorizing it makes meditating on it feel a little different. That's okay. That's normal for meditating. That's why memorization and meditation go together - like a right and left foot. Let that verse you memorized float into your head whenever it can. Use it as a "personalized ring-tone" so you'll know when God's "calling" you - not for rebuke, guilt, fear, or any of that ... but to remind you that long before Time was - God designed you - for your inheritance.

None of us - no matter how much we have and understand of God's love - will hit home-runs on every single one of those moments. But - fueled in this way - even the misses become something God can give us courage to learn from.

Try it out. 

I'm going to do it too. My verse is Psalm 27:4 ... my all-time favorite.

Let me know what you think.

I'll be back in a few days with the next, next step.

ps ... if you want to make your own instagramy quote picture thingy - you can use Canva. It's free, there's a free phone app, and it's easy. There are lots of tools to use to make such a thing - but canva is a snap.

For the Love - Day 46

Today's verse is a continuation from yesterday's - but the idea that John presents here is so astounding that I think it deserves consideration on its own.

This whole chapter is about God's love teaching us and motivating us to love others. 

But this statement on John's part - is so shocking. So often when we're loved and liked - we can fall into a habit of putting on an act. In fact - society rewards us richly for putting on one act after another - so much so that it's rare for us to ever take off our mask - or maybe I should say - all of our masks - because some of wear many at a time.

John tells us that Jesus' love for us is so perfect - so unconditional - so steadfast that His love actually inspires us to take off our masks, and allow Him to just love us as we are - no masks. No fear. It's an act of extreme spiritual courage and maturity to willingly let Jesus' love prompt us to let our masks fall - to allow Him to love us - the real us - the one we protect 24/7 with all sorts of clever mechanisms. In the space of that tremendously freeing and empowering love - we let Jesus love all those bits of us that we defend tooth and nail. The same bits that are behind the thoughts and habits that make walking with Jesus challenging. 

Jesus doesn't just want to do this once or twice. 

This is the sort of relationship He longs to have with us - from now on into all eternity.

It's embracing that love - not once, or twice, but over and over, that allows us to start to really be able to love others in a way that is modeled after Jesus' love for us. Fearlessly.

That's the love Jesus "invented" so to speak - with His work on the cross.

That's the fuel that powers His kingdom.

For the Love - Day 45

Is this passage the Apostle John's plan for discipleship? 

We can grow so much stronger in our faith together than we can on our own. The things that make community challenging - are the very same challenges that can be so helpful when it comes to discovering thoughts that hinder us from being blessed by community. When we humbly lean into those challenges - God can work in our hearts to transform us - nourish our souls, heal us.

It's so useful to be invested in growing our prayer times, Bible study times, meditation and worship times etc.

But there is something about those revealing moments - that demonstrate where my ego is still calling the shots, or my insecurities are getting in the way of loving others. 

We could talk discipleship-theory all day - but John has cut to the chase here. He's stream-lined it. Simplified it and boiled down to its barest bones growing as a Christ-follower. 

Love Jesus openly. Love others continuously. Then you'll be one with God and He will abide with you. 

That was the whole goal wasn't it. 

That's the Kingdom of God on earth. 

That's what we get to offer with our gratitude for the work Christ's done in us.

For the Love - Day 44

Depending on which church tradition you grew up in - you might think of today as Maundy Thursday. Regardless of which tradition you grew up in - it was on this night so long ago that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper with His disciples. This would be the supper depicted by DaVinci in that incredible masterpiece which shows the Apostle John seated right next to Jesus - the same Apostle who self-identified as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" (John 19:26, 21;7). This is the same Apostle John writing to us about love in this first of his three epistles. 

And - this verse - maybe sums up John's experience as a Jesus' beloved disciple - turned Apostle - who outlived all his fellow disciples long enough to be exiled in his old age to the island of Patmos. John lived through an unbelievably wild slice of world history. Of all the things he could use pen and paper to record for us - this is what He has to say. John is an old man at this point - probably born around 10 years after Jesus was - in 6 a.d. Here is is around 95 a.d. - looking back over the better share of nine decades. 

Perhaps - to John - this is his classic sermon, the way he told the gospel. When Jesus first called His disciples, He referred to John and his brother James as "sons of thunder" and while we don't know precisely what that means - one interpretation I grew up hearing was that John and his brother had a temper. Imagine - a young, hot-headed man, being so impressed with Jesus that after a long life of ministry and service - what he wants to tell us - is that Jesus loved us first.

Thank GOODNESS He did, too! We didn't have it in us to love Him - but that didn't stop Him from loving us - from introducing us to God's love, God's grace - and teaching us to love one another.

For the Love - Day 43

If 1 Corinthians 13 is the chapter that sets the bar for how we're called to love as Christians - then 1 John is the book that continues those ideas and adds a bunch more layers. It's indispensable in understanding just how much God loves us - how He loves us and what happens when we start to love one another.

Once upon a time - I really believed that if I loved others - my love came from me. If a situation or person frustrated me - I imagined that I had to muster up an extra portion of love to make sure there'd be enough. No wonder God's repeated exhortations to love felt exhausting.

Actually - to best understand chapter 4 of 1 John - we really need to go back to chapter 3. That's where this portion of the Apostle John's discussion about love begins.

Interestingly - John links loving God with listening to God. Seems like I heard my parents say something similar. John also tells us that if we're not committed to obeying God - we can fall into the trap that Cain fell into with his brother Abel: jealousy, insecurity, comparison. 1 John 3 spells out what it means to love as God loves. We're encouraged to love with more than just words and speech - but with action and truth. 

Loving others is a gift, an opportunity to work with God in a way that unites our obedience with His love for humanity. It also works best for me when I am most grateful to Him for what He's done for me - and most humble before Him - because I cannot do for myself at all - what He was happy to pay so dear to do for me.

For the Love - Day 42

Quite a few friends of mine have had babies lately.  Aren't babies just the best? I mean - they're so tiny and so new and they have their whole lives ahead of them.  Would doesn't love babies?!

But - just to be clear - when God adopts us - He's not adopting us as or seeing us as "babies."

If you've ever watched that old classic Charleston Heston film, Ben Hur, then you know - in Jesus' time you didn't adopt a baby. You didn't even adopt a kid. You adopted a full grown adult. You know - the kind like you and me.

That's because - back then - you wanted to adopt someone who was grown up enough that you knew who and what you were getting.

I forgot about this until I recently watched an Andy Stanley sermon on adoption. It was pretty great. 

... Almost as great as God wanting to adopt adults, like us, not "perfect" little babies. This is exactly how God wants to do it. There's no mistake here. You are not adopted by Him because He's "not sure" how you'll turn out. He knows. I mean - truly - He knows better than you do. That's actually precisely why He wants you in His family. 

That's a pretty great family.

That's a pretty great God.

For the Love - Day 41

You know you're in with your friend when they feel comfortable enough with you to share their fears and worries. 

But there's not usually much we can do about our friends' worries or our own.

And yet I don't think God's asking us to give Him our fears so He can "fix" them.  Instead - I think He invites us to give Him our fears because He wants to take the burden of carrying them off our shoulders - and offer His perspective on what we worry about, and offer His truth about our fears regarding ourselves, and offer His courage to face the very real troubles we sometimes have to face - courage of sufficient strength and force to help us see our troubles from an entirely different perspective - the sort of perspective in fact that can transform our biggest fears, worries and concerns into opportunities for drastic growth. 

Are there worries, fears and troubles you're facing as you getting ready for Easter? Can you hand them over to Him (and you might have to do it more than once if they're particularly bothersome, serious, or you've been carrying them for a while are in the habit of it).

Why bother trying to change how you view your anxieties?

Best reason I can offer - is He really does care for you - and truly wants to free you from what usually amounts to very hard work for us to carry such - and all our concerns are so easy for Him to carry. He will do right by every single one of them.

For the Love - Day 39

What are you rich in? Is it humor? Or relationships? Sarcasm?

Truth is - we're probably rich in a few things to at least some degree.

But this verse declares that God is rich in mercy. What a thing to have an abundance of! And - He's rich in it towards us. And He's not rich in mercy towards us because He's obligated, or because He's so much mercy He's got to figure out how to get rid of it before His taxes are due. Nope. It costs Him dearly to be so rich and generous towards us - but He's happy to be so - because He loves us so much and this is His favorite way to show it.

And the effect of this wonderfully love-fueled abundance? Nothing other than bringing us back to life from the dead through it - but distinctly different than before. Before it was just us - kicking around, making trouble, and winding up needing mercy. But now - we are made alive again with Christ. As radical a change of existence as any one can imagine or contemplate. To be alive with Christ means that every single thing we do from now on - is purposeful, potentially redemptive, and done with essentially God's own two hands and feet. 

To be alive with Christ in this world - is about one thousands times more outrageously awesome than being passed the ball by Michael Jordan in the dead last second of a championship game - when you're unguarded and right next to the basket - all set up to make your signature shot. Michael could shoot the three pointer without you - but instead He gives you the shot. God could do this with someone else - or even on His own - but He's passed us the shot.

For the Love - Day 38

This is another one of those passages that doesn't necessarily use the word love - but implies such a vast supply that it warrants celebration.

It'd be easy to read this and briefly think that Paul is saying that our human frailty - that thing about us and in us that makes us need God so desperately in the first place - is to God our super power. Maybe Paul's even saying that God's power - can be manifest through us so mightily because we are fallen creatures, so prone to missing the mark, so apt to wander. 

God's glory can surely be seen through heaven, angels, cherubim, seraphim, - or at least that's what I believe - though I've never seen any of that list. But through that list God's perfect holiness is made perfectly manifest. Through us on the other hand, God's grace is brought into focus unlike anywhere else in the universe.

It is embracing our weakness - in the full measure of humility we can that allows us to in real faith lean on God like never before. It's when we're most human - that God can be most God.

And He wants that for us.

As for His grace being "sufficient". Can I confess - that for a long time - every time I read this verse - in my bones - I felt like God was saying something akin to "my grace is enough for you to make do with" or maybe "you can eek it out with my grace".  

But you know that's not really how God works is it? He doesn't give us barely enough of Himself to get by. 

His grace is sufficient - because it's when we have these things about ourselves that bring us to the end of ourselves - the things that make us shake our head and fear the devil may win - that given over to Him - flings open the door to a vast store-house of every provision of character, grace and faith we could ever want ... far more, in fact, than we have the wherewithal to act on usually. What God calls sufficiency - we call extreme abundance. If God were promising us a drink of water with this verse - the image He'd attach to it - would be the Hoover Dam.

And the thing that God's offering in this sufficiency for is turning our "worst's" into opportunities for transformation.

How would your life be different if you woke up tomorrow morning with your character refined, advanced, strengthened, perfected? How long would it take your spouse, kids, friends, neighbors to figure it out? 

If you wanted to get that without God - how would you do it? Where would you buy it?

This whole passage - from verse 7 all the way through 10 screams "See how much I love you!" 

"Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong." NASB

For the Love - Day 37

Remember the Three Musketeers?  One for all - and ... 

you know what they say.

Athos, Porthos, Arimis, and d'Artagnan.

Who didn't admire young d'Artagnan's eagerness to be part of the best - who didn't want what the Three Musketeers had - in terms of skill, expertise, camaraderie, adventure, heroism, altruism ... yet they remained human.

If you search "all for one and one for all" you will have to look pretty hard to find a single reference to scripture ...

Yet - Jesus was the original "one for all" - He, the One Son of God, died for us all. Paul says it like this;

"We are ruled by Christ’s love for us. We are certain that if one person died for everyone else, then all of us have died. 15 And Christ did die for all of us. He died so we would no longer live for ourselves, but for the one who died and was raised to life for us." CEV

Paul sees Jesus self-sacrifice as lifting off of us not only the burden of sin that we could not remove from ourselves for ourselves, but also so no one else would ever have to.  Jesus' death was the "easy" part though - the harder part by far was living. Because Jesus was willing to die - He was therefore able to show us how to live. His incredible example still compels people - to unite, to serve, to be heroic, to give of themselves. The same example that motivated Alexandre' Dumas to write his famous story, The Three Musketeers.

The funny thing is - Jesus doesn't just invite two other men to fight along side Him. He invites all of us - to fight for the all those who can't, to serve those who won't say thanks, to give of ourselves along with Him to those who didn't want to receive Him. He invites us into this world changing cameraderie - shoulder to shoulder with Him - compelled to do so as love is wont to compel. This isn't the work of weak, mushy love. This also isn't the work of that dreadful "tough love" that's neither tough nor love. Jesus example of Love is heroic, altruistic, and inspiring. Dumas actually had to shrink Jesus' goal to make a workable story. Jesus' story has room for all of us. Jesus' needs all of us - almost as badly as we need it. 

For the Love - Day 36

This chapter is so fantastic - it warrants two days - don't you think?

There are many verses in this chapter that are wonderful fuel for lovely thoughts - and which ones inspire me most shifts now and again. Today's verse has a rhythm of rescue to it; 

bears all things

believes all things, 

hopes all things

endures all things

Once upon a time the very idea of having this sort of love for others exhausted me. I'd think about that goal - and think "I just can't do it". 

But since refocusing on the reality that this chapter describes God's love for all of us - on our worst day - and on His worst day (in so far as He has those).  And still He loves us this much!  

So now I relish with gratitude the security God offers us in this unflappable inexhaustible love coming from His abundance to fulfill my need. And it's had this curious effect of reducing the pressure I felt to raise my love-game up.  Instead - it's like an adult, faith-based version of show-and-tell - in which I get to tell others, "Look how much God loves me - despite it all! I don't deserve - but He just keeps giving it!" ... and then share it (so to speak) with the class. 

It's not our love we extend to others. It's God's.

For the Love - Day 35

Believe it or not - when I first read this chapter on my own as a freshman at Michigan State ... I was furious. You see, I thought Paul was being sarcastic - and I wasn't having any of that. When I figured out that Paul was actually being serious though - I memorized the whole chapter. The idea that this could be the standard of how we love each other just grabbed my imagination.

Then one day - much later - it dawned on me that while Paul is teaching us how to love one another - he's really revealing God's love for us. In fact - I think it's even possible that Paul realized that this was how Jesus loved him - despite everything that he'd done to suppress the growth of the early church. Maybe that realization was what fueled all those missionary journeys?

For now though - how do you see this love that Paul's describing manifest in your life? Which of these first three verses speaks to you most powerfully - or is your favorite?  If the grand gestures of self-sacrificial devotion pale in comparison to love itself - what is the value of such acts? What's the value of love? Which is easier to do or the bigger sacrifice day after day - year after year? How do we live by Paul's words on love?

For the Love - Day 34

So much in life is up for grabs; tomorrow's weather, the DOW Jones this time tomorrow, international politics, ice-cream flavor of the week at the Sweet Shop down the street from my house. Sometimes there's so much uncertainty - it's tempting to think that nothing's certain ... just "death and taxes" as they say.

But - thankfully - that's just not true. Death and taxes aren't even as certain as God's love for us. In fact - we actually live in a world where only God's love is certain - and that's a pretty fantastic certainty. 

You've heard this before no doubt - but are you living bouyed up above all the stuff of the day because of that promise - or are you wearied and burdened down despite that truth? 

There are people who are certain of the promise of science - frequently - they become scientists. There are people who are positive of the promise of fortune - and frequently those people become investors. There are people who are committed to the promise of health - and they become disciplined athletes.

What does embracing God's promise to love you without fail, without exception inspire you to do?

For the Love - Day 33

Today's passage is so clear and straightforward - yet there's so much there to think about - let's just do that instead. Let's meditate on this gem of an idea for a few moments. All you have to do is pick a phrase from today's passage - and hold it in your mind - then take a few deep breaths - and slow your breathing down ... you can do this by inhaling for three counts, hold your breath for three counts, then exhale for six counts, and then wait three counts again. Next time - inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for eight, hold for four ... if you feel like going 5, 5, 10, 5 - that's cool - but 4 is plenty slow enough too. Then - while you're nice and calm - roll the phrase you picked out around in your mind a bit. What is it about that phrase that speaks to you? How is God speaking to you through it? Don't sweat it if you have other thoughts come along - bat them away if you like and keep meditating, or not. No pressure. If you give this a try now and again - it'll get easier and easier. Soon you'll find that meditation - like God's hope - never disappoints.

For the Love - Day 32

Even if you didn't grow up going to church two, three or even more times every week - you know this verse. You've heard this idea. This notion of a friend - loving their friends so much that'd they'd willingly give up their lives for them - just gets us - right there.

But here's the thing - the men Jesus called to follow Him and become His disciples - weren't made into the sorts of men we think of them as now - just by His death.

To be sure, His death had a huge impact on them. We read about it - both in the Bible - and in extrabiblical history.

But the only reason His death had the impact that it did - was because He'd been so fully alive with them for all that time before He died. It was because they saw His love for them, for His father, for His calling, for His people, for the world - day in and day out - that when they saw they were losing that - Him - they were "like sheep without a shepherd. It was also because He didn't half-heartedly live. He was fully alive and into life - He walked, He boated, He fished, He went to parties, He went to feasts, He argued, He healed. 

And doing that for them - was just as much a choice. Living as fully as He could was a gift too.

If He'd spent His precious time on earth just waiting to be crucified - even sacrificially - we would've never heard of Him. If He'd passed those days - grumpily, torn with indecision ... He'd have remained as nameless as the rest of those people the Romans crucified.

No. He lived the very abundant life He offers us. How else could He know what He's talking about?

In fact, I kind of think choosing to live with us day in and day out was just the sort of rigorous, demanding, daily-commitment testing training you'd have to really embrace in order to be able to even really properly think about dying for us in such a way as to open our eyes and launch a globe-rocking movement.

For the Love - Day 31

"Remain."  Remain means "continue - in this verse it indicates faithfulness.  There are some translations that use the word "abide" instead.  Abide - is an interesting choice - because it includes notions of obeying and dwelling.

Basically - if you remain with Jesus in the context of this verse - you obediently continue with Him - not for a weekend retreat - but you unpack your bags so to speak.  You're with Him for the duration.

The beginning of this chapter Jesus says He's the true vine ... reminding us that there are some not so true vines out there too. 

How can we ever know if we're abiding in the true vine?

When we abide in the true vine, in Jesus, we bear fruit.  What's fruit?  It for sure is not popularity, or money, or power. When you're fruitful - there's more of God's Kingdom available for us all to live in.  Then we help each other abide in such a way that grace, love and truth are easier to see - and just maybe - sometimes they're even a little easier to do.  Fruitful sounds like humility and looks like caring for one another.  Fruitful is what we're made for - and frankly - it's so awesome that Jesus is dying for us to know what that's like.  Ahem.

Terrible puns aside - imagine someone mentoring you - and being so committed to that role that they give you the key, fling open the fridge, and let you have your own room.  You'd know that mentor was committed to you ... and the only thing that would be left would be for you to ... well ... accept it.

For the Love - Day 30

I was torn today - between turning verse 34 or 35 into an instagramable quote thingy.  I went with 35 because, well, it struck me.

Ya know - yesterday morning - I stared at the dreaded blinking cursor for yesterday's post for about ... well ... too long.  I started at the cursor yesterday morning, yesterday afternoon - again in the evening ... finally I felt I had something to say. 

Honestly - what I had to say wasn't different from what I'd thought to say right off the bat yesterday morning - but the problem was I'd started thinking - "why would anyone in the world still want to hear about this topic - 29 days in?".  Then I put the "what was I thinking" maraschino cherry on top. 

It is a little daunting to imagine 46 different ways to say "Jesus loves you" - even if they're all right there in the Bible. 

And yet - maybe the clever bit isn't saying that Jesus loves you" 46 different ways - but rather the same way over and over.  It's not that we're too daft to get the words the first time around. It's more that those words have to travel "the deadly 12 inches" from our brains to our hearts.   

46 days is like a tiny sampler pack of all the ways that Jesus loves us.  We could hear those words for thousands upon thousands of days in the greatest streak ever before we'd understand them enough to make the second part of today's passage remotely natural; the loving one another part.

So - we're a month into Lent and there are just 16 more days until Easter.  I have 16 more verses to go through.  Since day one my laptop has crashed, the cat ate the rubber-band off my note-card stack of verses (yep - I'm that analog) - and sent my carefully ordered but not numbered cards flying all over the house (I believe I found them all ... though not all of the rubber-band :/ ).  You've had lots going on in the last month too - and there's this big holiday coming up in just a couple of weeks to get ready for.  I'm immensely grateful for you coming along on this journey because I can not think of anything more valuable to anyone's faith than aligning ourselves with what motivated Jesus to do what He did.  And I can't help but think that the number one reason Christians aren't always as associated with Jesus' motivation as we'd like - is because we're not as rooted and soaked, and marinated in His Love as He'd like.  Christians loving like mad is natural - if we're in the habit of letting Him slather His love on our parched souls.  Putting on the love of Jesus is like showering, eating, sleeping ... life's a little better when we do it on the daily.  It's like a paraphrase of Romans 8:31 - "If Jesus loves me, what can go wrong?"  - in light of that - it's worth saying again ... 

"So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.”   John 13: 34-35

For the Love - Day 29

The next words in this verse are: "The Good Shepherd sacrifices His life for His sheep.  

The whole first half of this chapter of John Jesus talks about the Good Shepherd.  

What's interesting to me that Jesus contrasts the way He cares for us - His sheep - not with the opposite with the shepherd ... which ... I'd think would be the butcher.  Jesus gives us life - the butcher would be the one who'd take a sheep's life away.  Instead - Jesus contrasts Himself with the thief.

Of course - when we don't accept the abundance that Jesus offers - we don't die - we just end up living an existence with the best parts stolen from us - the parts that the thief sneakily snuck in and stole.

Sometimes the thief looks like fear.  Sometimes it looks like sucking up.  Sometimes it looks like a whole lot of religiosity.  Honestly - the thief is totally a black-belt ninja chameleon.  Actually - we are so vulnerable to having the abundant life Jesus wants to give us taken away from us - that it takes a fair bit of courage and a lot of Jesus' love to help us hang onto what Jesus offers.  It's easier to live stolen from than it is to walk by faith in Jesus' love - but only for a moment.  Jesus' way is not only the abundant life - but it's the only life that feels like living.  Jesus' way offers us freedom.  The thief - in the end - really is in cahoots with the butcher.

For the Love - Day 28

Jesus makes this statement - seemingly to the very crowd that was gathered to watch the woman caught in adultery be stoned.  

Jesus made this statement more in the book of John than any other - and it's particularly stark on the heals of the account communicated in the first eleven verses of John 8.

The Pharisees shouted back "You can't testify about yourself!" - and Jesus comes right back at them with the cryptic answer of "I can testify about myself because I know where I'm from and where I'm going"

What isn't cryptic though is that He surely did shed light on the people living on the earth with Him in the first century.  Jesus had a knack for taking the brutish, harsh realities of life and - yes - shedding the bright light of the noon-day sun on them - not just once - but over and over.  If He'd only done it once - we could suspect it was an accident or happenstance.  But it is His way.  It's a hallmark of the Kingdom for Jesus' presence and response to flood light on dark moments of despair and misery. 

For the Love - Day 27

Accusers.  

Public shame.

Add to that an angry mob - one that set this woman up - just so this deadly train-wreck of a moment could happen.  Of course the whole things was a test for Jesus and His adversaries were willing to let this woman become a casualty of their schemes.

Can you imagine being asked by such a mob to give an opinion on how they should honor the Law of Moses?  It wouldn't have taken anything for them to turn on Him - maybe that was their only plan.

How did Jesus manage to always come up with answers like the one He gave on this day:  "Let him without sin throw the first stone."  Over and over - when put on the spot - Jesus came up with a gem.  When put on the spot - as often as not - I do not come up with a gem.  I come up with something spectacularly forgettable - or worse - something I wish everyone would forget.

It seems that at least part of His ability to do so though was rooted in His understanding who He was, what He was there to do, and who He was there to speak to.  Perhaps at least some of the "authority" that He spoke with that was so different from how everyone else spoke - was He wasn't "trying" achieve His own agenda.  He wasn't out to promote Himself.  He'd done His soul-searching for forty days in the desert and every day after that.  He wasn't attempting to accomplish impressive goals.

He was there to show us the Kingdom - and He was amazing at it.

No wonder the down-trodden and oppressed loved Him.

No wonder His enemies were terrified of Him.

This is still who He is.