January 21
Posted: January 21, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized 1 Comment »Don’t run up debts, except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others, you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code—don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of—finally adds up to this: Love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love. Romans 13:8-10 The Message
Following Jesus is more than learning how to follow rules for right living.
Here’s what I am learning about me…It is hard for me to get beyond the narrow confines of myself. I have a tough time caring enough about someone else to actually take the time to learn how to love them well.
In our house, we have, like most families, a varied assortment of food preferences – and even some limitations.
My daughter is allergic to fruit. And yet, year after year, my inclination is to buy her fruit platters. Why? It’s simple – when she was a little girl she LOVED fruit (before the allergy onset). She loved kiwi and apples and mandarin oranges. Now if she eats fruit, her throat closes up and she turns blue. After years of believing that serving fruit to my toddler was good parenting, I continue to have an urge to buy her fruit. My two sons have strong preferences for rice and potatoes. One likes rice, the other is a potato man like his dad. I never can remember which is which. These guys are in their twenties – shouldn’t a good mom be able to remember which one likes rice?
How do we move beyond this?
I have not found a system to solve my inability to love well.
Jean-Pierre Caussade, an eighteenth-century Jesuit spiritual director offered this advice, “Don’t fuss too much about yourself”. Don’t fight the truth about yourself. In weakness, strength is discovered. As we try to pay off debts, not sleep with someone else’s spouse, not commit murder, remember to avoid serving fruit when our daughter comes to visit, serve rice to Scott and potatoes to Michael (ahhh…there is that memory)… we will discover our complete inadequacy. At that moment, we have to choose – deny, deny, deny, or acknowledge. Following Jesus looks like an act of outward obedience that is often beyond us; the fruit of grace is experienced within us.
What choices are you making in this area?
as a follow-up to a couple of days ago – I admitted that I lied and asked forgiveness. I was forgiven completely. It is hard to move beyond myself. I most often fuss too much about myself. Once I stopped fighting the truth about myself and simply owned not being honest, it didn’t seem like the worst thing in the world. Discovering my complete inadequacy led to the fruit of grace.