Unequals in Love

The bible has said Christians are not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers.  A lot of Christians take exception to this teaching, believing it to be overly harsh.  This is especially true when the Christian is in love with an unbeliever.  At that point love trumps every teaching and the Christian in question believes love will solve everything.

Love is powerful.  But is it love when the core of who you are, your Christian faith, is rejected by the one you love?  The real you is neither known nor valued by the person you love.  You don’t share your deepest thoughts with your beloved because they aren’t understood.  You don’t share your deepest feelings, for they aren’t appreciated.  You close off your true self from your loved one and not only is there not any deep unity, your own soul begins to suffocate.  You make compromises for the relationship.  You give up some of what sustains you, for the sake of peace.  You do things that cause you vague feelings of shame, for you have compromised your integrity.  The relationship that is left is unsatisfying on the deepest level.  You may still love in an altruistic way, but you lose your own self.  “What does it profit a person to gain the whole world and lose your own soul.”  –Jesus

Reconciliation

Perhaps you’ve had a huge disagreement with someone over a particular issue, the conversation became emotionally charged, and now you are avoiding each other.  You each have deeply held beliefs from which you can’t back down without sacrificing your integrity.  Yet, you value your relationship.  Perhaps you are family or you have a long history together.  There seems to be no way you can both win.  Or is there?  Perhaps you can seek reconciliation.  Reconciliation means a restoration of peace and a restoration of relationship.  Reconciliation says “I value you and I respect you.  I acknowledge your right to your beliefs though they differ from mine”.  This frees you to be honest.  You are not being passive and seeming to agree to something when you don’t.  You are not playing games in order to restore peace.  You are not trying to manipulate the other person into agreeing with you.  You are not in denial about the other person’s position.

How can you broker a reconciliation?  You can begin by making the first  move.  You can listen to the other person’s position.  You can be gracious by sharing with the other person how much you value them and how much you respect them even though you hold a different point of view.  You can suggest reconciliation with out resolution.  Resolution would require the end of the disagreement and that isn’t likely.  Reconciliation means to give up winning, for the sake of the relationship, which has higher value than proving yourself to be right.  Of course, the other person may not accept reconciliation without resolution.  At that point all you can do is leave the door open.  Its possible they no longer value the relationshjip as much as you do.  You’ve done your best to be generous while maintaining your integrity.  You simply have to move on, and never stop praying.

How Humble am I

Its been said if I think about how humble I am its a sure sign I’m not humble.  Humble people seldom think about themselves at all.  so lets assume we’re proud people who desire to be humble.  The following questions may help us find our way:

1.  Do I count my blessings and thank God for them?  If I count my misfortunes I may have an attitude of thinking I deserve better.  Or I may have the attitude that I’m a victim and somehow a victim is more deserving than most people.

2.  Do I trust myself only or do I trust others and God?  Pride has an attitude of “only I can do things right”

3.  Do I encourage people to be all they can be, or do I nag and manipulate them to be all I want them to be?

4.  Do I mind interruptions?  Do I value others needs or do mine always have priority?  Pride considers my priorities of greater value than other people.

5.  Do I forgive?  Pride won’t forgive till the other person kneels before my throne.

6.  Am I a positive person?  Do I see good in people and situations?  Pride is critical and considers self too good for whats dealt to it .

7.  How do I treat the elderly, children and the disabled?  Am I patient and compassionate?  Do I find “they” get in my way when I have “important” missions to accomplish?

8.  Do I seek to serve others or to direct them?

9.  Is it all about me or all about something bigger than me?

10.  A humble person can state their truth without demanding agreement.  Can I?

Seeking change in my attitudes in order to be more grateful to God and more loving toward others is the first step toward becoming a humble person.

Why We Hold On To The Past

Whether our cherished memory is a good memory or a bad one, we hold onto it because there is some kind of payoff for doing so.  Sometimes this is harmless or even good for us.  We may remember a particular place or event and the memory evokes pleasure and relaxation.  This may even have some health benefits, such as lower of heartrate and blood pressure.  However, its important to remember that all memories are distorted.  Our place or event may have become exaggerated in is perfection because we want or need it to be so.  The saying “you can’t go home again” may come from this experience.  When we get home and see it in all its reality, its no longer the perfect place we built up in our memory, and the disappointment is so great we wish we hadn’t gone back home at all. 

We may also hold on to bad memories because of payoffs.  We may exaggerate those memories as well, because it suits us to do so.  We may use something from the past to excuse our failures in the present.  We may hold onto a past event because we believe if we just think about it long enough, we’ll think of some way to make it better.  Its also possible to remember a person we dislike or who has hurt us in a one-sided exaggerated caricature until they become an inflatable devil who just keeps growing bigger.  The worse devil we have, the more admired we are in our victimhood and we gain status and righteousness in our own eyes.  But the person may no longer be a devil if we could see their reality today.  People estranged from parents are often surprised at how harmless their frail elderly parents appear.  They still see their parent through a child’s eyes.  Today their eyes are adult and maybe they are parents themselves.  Going full circle where one can see parents through a parent’s eyes instead of a child’s eyes is a sign of reality and maturity.  Memories contain a lot of fantasy that meets our needs and correlate badly with today’s reality.  Therefore if memories are of no beneficial use, we can choose to put them away.

Daddy Can See

Our little daughter was buckled into her bicycle carrier behind her father.  As he began to pedal away with her, she screamed “Daddy, I can’t see where we’re going!”  He reassured her that she could relax and enjoy the scenery because Daddy was steering and he could see just fine. 

How like my relationship with my heavenly father.  So often I long to see what is up ahead.  I just want to know how things are going to turn out.  I know the Lord is steering, but can I just relax and enjoy the scenery?  Can I trust Him that much?

 

by Marie

A Mother’s Love

I was working side by side with a young man who told me his mother hated him.  I asked if he was sure it was hate and not just a lot of conflict.  He assured me she had professed her hatred of him and based it on his similarity to his father whom she had divorced.  Overcome with sadness for him, I asked who he had in his life to love him.  He claimed his grandma and an uncle loved him.  He also said he got “crumbs of love” from older people like me.

This is so tragic.  A child may get enough affirmation to be safe from emotional disturbance, but rejection by one’s own mother causes a deep sadness that lasts a lifetime.  How that mother needed counseling about her divorce.  She needed healing from her bitterness, because bitterness poisons others as well as oneself.  How sad that these two parents who once loved one another could dissolve into such bitter hatred it was damaging the child they had borne together.

My Little Girl

I recently shared space with some very young ladies aged 5 to 12 who were in a beauty pageant.  While they were all very nice, polite and well-behaved, they all seemed pre-occupied and self-absorbed.  They were concerned with their hair, their outfits, how they spoke, how they moved, and their performances.  They seemed lacking in interest toward others, or anything else at all.  While their mothers seemed to be having an enjoyable time, I didn’t notice the little girls laughing or playing.  I think I would give my little girl dolls, pets, a garden, friends and chances to play with things that intrigued her.  That was the sort of happy growing-up time I had as a girl.  I never wondered about how I looked till I was much older.  I had plenty of time to think about it then.

The Fatherhood of God

What do we think of a man who fathers children, then abandons them?  Maybe he never even stays long enough to see his child’s birth or to know its gender.  We don’t think much of such fathers.  Why, then, would any of us think God is a distant diety who initiated certain processes for life on earth and then left that life to fend for itself?  Do we think good, caring human fathers are better persons than God?

The Prodigal Son

The story of the prodigal son is so famous in our culture, even people who don’t know the origin of the story know the word “prodigal” to mean someone who is rebellious and estranged from family.  The original story told by Jesus has many different lessons contained in it,and to fully understand, it has to be looked at through the prism of ancient Hebrew culture.

The son who asked for his inheritance committed a sin, which in that culture deserved the death sentence.  He not only denied his father any respect, he as much as said “I wish you were dead because I only care about the wealth I will get.”  His father, unbelievably, gave him his inheritance, and further disrespect followed.  The prodigal son sold his portion of the land.  In Hebrew culture, the land was a gift from God, never to be sold.  With the money he got from the sale, he left his father, his country, his culture and in all that as well as spending his money in “wild living” he trashed every one of his father’s values.

When the money ran out, he found himself friendless and starving.  He hired himself out to a pig farmer.  The pig was considered filthy in his native culture, yet he was so hungry he wanted to eat with the pigs and was denied even that.  The story says “he came to his senses”.  There’s hope in that little phrase.  God often brings people to a place where they see the light.  God gave this young man such a longing for home, he was willing to risk throwing himself on his father’s mercy.  He recognized being a slave in his father’s house was better than his present situation.

When he comes home, the story shows the father seeing him “from afar”, meaning the father has been watching the horizon.  When he recognizes his son, he runs to him.  This was unheard of in this culture.  This son had wronged the father, and the father’s running to the son was the height of indignity.  Then he threw himself on the son, hugging the young man who probably reeked of pigs.  The father bestows all the symbols of sonship on his son once again, the ring, the robe and the sandals.  There was no earning of this favor.  It was sheer mercy.  Then the father throws a party.

This is a picture of God.  God is a father who so loves his errant children, there should be no fear, ever, in returning home to him.

Another interesting part of the story is the reaction of the older son, who is jealous of all the attention being paid to his treasonous brother.  He had, after all, been the perfect son, staying behind, caring for the father’s interests, and doing a double share of the work.  However, it is clear he also wants something from his father.  He wants recognition and reward.  He wants to be considered better than his brother.  He is a model of the religious person who hopes to earn reward from God by “being good enough”.  He hopes to earn through works what the father gives through grace.  He has no understanding of his father’s heart, nor does he truly love his father.

The summary of the whole story is this father has two sons who neither love him nor appreciate him for who he is.  None of their actions show a care for the father or a putting of the Father’s interests first.  In that way, neither of the sons is truly the better son.  Both are in the relationship for what they can get out of it.  One is just more socially acceptable.

Again, we see the father who loves both his sons when neither has earned the father’s love.  How like God and his human children.  Who of us can say we truly put God first.  Who of us can say we truly love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength.  Thank God, through his grace and revelation of himself, some of us are beginning to come to our senses.  He has a long way to take us yet, before we understand His heart, appreciate Him and begin to become like Him.

Beloved Unbelievers

It is so hard to watch  loved ones stubbornly persist in their agnosticism.  They insist God is unknowable, yet we suspect they don’t really care to know Him.  We watch them continually turn away from even the possibility of a personal God and wonder if their death will eternally freeze them in position with their backs turned to God.  They will never see all they were made for.  They will be lost, alone, without hope.  Knowing every day is one day less for choosing God, watching them is like watching a child play on the freeway.  They’ve had their close calls, and if they don’t make a move it will eventually be too late.