The Heartbeat of Character

Do you want to have the highest character you can possibly have?

Do you want the finest jewel of self quality?

Then love.

Yes, love.

1 Corinthians 13 spells it out: the most precious, the best, and the most valuable gift you can have is to love.

Love.

Not a frilly, lacy, doily love that’s set out for Sunday brunches, but a real, in-the-depths-of-need love for breath-to-breath living . . and for eternity.

Love, real love, love that changes the world, love that changes you, is love from God’s heart.

Love is the heartbeat of God.

So if you want to love, you must listen to God’s heartbeat.

And you can, because it’s rhythm is recorded, in EKG calligraphy, in 1 Corinthians 13.

Listen to His heartbeat.

Love.

Listen to it, and you hear its supernatural, only-from-God rhythm.  The only way you can ever have it is if God gives it.  And He does.  Freely.

Ask Him to touch your heart, to change its dead pulse to His thunderous beat of everlasting love.

And you will have the heartbeat of character.

Love.

Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13:13, NLT)

 

 

 

 

Love is as love does.

There’s a famous saying from Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Agreed, and, more importantly, Love is as love does.

Love is as love does.

Do you want to know what real love is?  Look to God.

John tells us,

God is love.  (1 John 4:16a)

Read 1 Corinthians 13 and substitute God’s name for love each time you come to it.  To make it more personal, substitute different names for God,

Jesus.  The Great I AM.  The King of Kings.  The Prince of Peace.  God the Father.

And so on.

Love is all that is lined out in 1 Corinthians 13, but best of all, all the things love is are things love does.

Now read the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.  And now you see.

Love does.

This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10, ISV)

 

 

 

 

1 Corinthians 13:5

[Love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:5, NIV)

If I were going to make an arbitrary list of what love is, I could not possibly make a list more contrary to our nature than the list God gives in 1 Corinthians.

Although pieces of 1 Corinthians 13 can be found in frames or Christian greeting cards . . and although the words are likely to be in cursive or italics . . and although we seem to somehow think 1 Corinthians 13 is romantically suited for our weddings . . if we are realistic about who we are as humans, we would be more likely to write the words in large, black capital letters with a hazard symbol framing them.

WARNING: SCARY WORDS FROM GOD.  READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Somehow we get caught up in pink flowers and calligraphy and miss the terror of God’s Words!  Love is what?  Rather than placidly smile when we hear God’s ideas about love, we would be more honest to shrink back in horror.

It does not dishonor others . .

Most American jokes are founded on the principle of dishonoring someone.  Make fun of someone, laugh at someone else’s expense.  Most fame is achieved by pushing down hard on the masses or by breakneck competition to elevate yourself to greatness.

But dishonoring is more insidious than even jokes and ambitions.  We dishonor all the time with barely any knowledge (or guilt) of what we’re doing.  We speak bad of a spouse (or ex), child, in-law, sister, brother, friend, coworker, boss, celebrity, government leader, or rude sales clerk without batting an eye.

And it takes no effort for us to do things that dishonor others: like jerking our car out in the lane and squeezing it in, forcing the car behind us to brake . . telling a lie . . leaving a pile of store clothes on the bench in the dressing room . . gossiping about someone with the guise of caring about them . . throwing together a quick dinner for family instead of taking the time to make a nice meal to have more time for a computer game . . and on and on and on.  Not only do we dishonor habitually, but we are incredibly defensive about it.  Should someone ever accuse us of what we are actually doing, we can find a million excuses for our behavior (and dishonor our accuser with our retort).

it is not self-seeking . .

On many days, this would rule out 99-100% of what we do.  Love is not self-seeking, God says.  If we ever doubted before, we should know the moment we read these words that love can only come from God.

Human nature self-seeks.  Not occasionally.  Not even habitually.  But constantly.  We don’t know how to do anything else, nor do we want to know!  Anything secular has one core purpose: to self-seek.

Movies are our self-seek for entertainment.  Shopping our self-seek for possessions.  Careers our self-seek for achievement.  Relationships our self-seek for fulfillment.  Even when we buy things for others or do acts of service for them, so often our heart is self-seeking honor.  We want to be congratulated, appreciated, admired, looked up to.

Love, without Christ as its Author, is nothing more than a self-seeking venture.

Parents love so their children will make them proud, love them back, take care of them when they’re older, etc.

Friends love to promote their status, get attention, not feel so lonely, etc.

Workers pretend to love their bosses in hope of promotions, better hours, good reviews, etc.

Couples share romance only to the extent that they think they will receive something back from what they give.

. . it is not easily angered . .

Our society makes its living on anger.  Anger fuels most courts, hosts many talk shows, drives many cartoons, and is the star of many reality shows.  Anger is used to power adrenaline in suspense and horror movies.  People exercise, go to counseling, and take medication to try to get rid of anger.  Some people even think revenge is a healthy or necessary way to get rid of anger!

Somehow, in our society, you often become more important if you are an angry person.  People pay more attention to you.  You get more respect.  You may even get your own television show.  But in God’s view, there is no reward for being easily angry but rather it is a sign that you do not truly love (and, according to Proverbs, that you are not wise).

. . it keeps no record of wrongs.

This explanation destroys the concept that you can be bitter and loving.  1 Corinthians 13 leaves no room for question: you cannot love and keep a scorecard of what someone has done wrong.

Before we get up in arms about the impossibility this definition of love seems to bring, let’s reflect on God’s love.  If He kept a record of wrongs against us after He Himself paid for our sins—if He held even one or two sins back from forgiveness—would any of us make it into Heaven?

The only way we can be saved is because God does not desire to keep a record of wrongs!  Because He is just, He has to punish sin.  But because He doesn’t want to keep a record of our wrongs, He Himself bore the punishment for our sins.  If He treated us even remotely like we treat our family, friends, in-laws, coworkers, bosses, and, worst of all, spouses, we would have no hope of any invitation into Heaven.  God would drop His covenant with us the way we drop our covenant with a husband or wife in divorce court.

But since God isn’t like us, He chooses to keep no record of wrongs.  Actually, since Christ paid for all our sins, only if we reject Him can we re-reveal the record of our wrongs!  God has given us the gift of wiping our slate clean—again and again.  Do we even try to do that for others?

[Love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:5, NIV)

No longer should we read 1 Corinthians 13 with sentimental complacency or passive approval.  We should rather read with deliberate reverence, an awe for God’s love, and a longing to reflect His love to everyone around us.

Personally, right now, what will you and I do to reflect the image of love we see in this verse?  Who specifically will we reach with a truth from this verse?  If you know God through Jesus Christ’s sacrifice of love, then you can imitate the qualities you see in this verse.  You and I can begin to honor others, love selflessly, practice temperance, and throw away the scorecards of past wounds.  And we can do this through the love of Jesus Christ.

[Love] does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. (1 Corinthians 13:5, NIV)

1 Corinthians 13:2, Part 1

 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2, NIV)

I used to be a mystery TV/movie junkie.  I would watch show after show of someone getting murdered and someone trying to figure out who did it.  In most movies and shows, the directors try to trick you with all kinds of misleading clues, by who they feature as suspects, by camera angles, etc.

Even as a kid, I loved mysteries.  I had mystery books and mystery series: mysteries where girls solved the cases, where boys solved the cases, where dogs solved the mystery, and where mice–yes, even mice–solved the mystery.

What is it about mysteries that captures our attention?  Isn’t it our pride?

After all, we want to be the one to solve the mystery.  And we want to solve it first, before anyone else does, including Aunt Doris who is the best mystery solver we know.  We want to have bragging rights that we figured the mystery out in a mere 5 minutes of the show, that we hadn’t even finished our first tub of popcorn at the theater before we knew ‘who done it’.

But . . you know what?

No one is going to stand before God on Judgment Day and proudly announce, “Do you remember that Nancy Drew mystery that none of my classmates could solve?  I figured it out after the first chapter.”

All right, you may say, I follow so far.  But then it gets harder.

No one is going to stand before God on Judgment Day and proudly announce that (s)he solved any mystery.

Did you figure out end-times eschatology?  It’s not going to impress God.

Did you invent a new rocket fuel and travel to Mars in 5 minutes?  God is not amazed.

Did you find a way for cars to run on soda pop instead of gasoline?  Nope, won’t impress God.

Did you come up with a cure for a disease?  You know what?  That, in itself, still won’t impress God.

What!?!  Why??

Because, if you didn’t do it for love, it doesn’t count to your credit.  If you found a cure so you could create a patent pharmaceutical and make millions, that doesn’t impress God.  If you found a cure so you could win the Nobel Peace Prize, that doesn’t impress God, either.

Knowledge is knowing.  It doesn’t say what you did with the knowledge, or why you did what you did.  It just says you knew.

Can knowledge help others?  Not in and of itself.  If you know a way to diffuse nuclear bombs from a thousand miles away, but you never share that knowledge–or if you use that knowledge for selfish ambition–you haven’t done anything majestic at all.  Knowledge, in and of itself, is not wow.

We put a high rank on knowing in this world.  We frame our diplomas, buy graduation rings, and call each other by titles based on what we “know”.  In some countries, knowledge is the focus of life.  In India, for example, such a high value is placed on knowledge that a high school student who fails his exam is at risk for committing suicide.

But do you know what?  Knowledge doesn’t say anything about the nature of who we are in our heart.

God has knowledge of good and evil, but He is only good.

Satan has knowledge of good and evil, but he is only evil.

Knowledge is what is in our mind, but it is our hearts that tell us what do with it.

 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. (1 Corinthians 13:2, NIV)

1 Corinthians 13:1, Part 2

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1, NIV)

Yesterday, I opened an envelope.  Little paper hearts spilled out over the card before I’d even opened the card.  They fell in my lap, and this lovely feeling of like a violin playing next to Prussian blue waters and swans swimming on the silky stained glass of the water’s surface came over me.  I wouldn’t trade that feeling for the so-called ‘enlightment’ all the meditation in the world could bring.  I wouldn’t trade that feeling for 10,000 years worth of knowledge.  Why?  Because I love love.

Love speaks to us something extraordinary.  Something that breaks out of the cycle of lies like a firefighter breaking through a wall to save an unconscious victim.  Love rescues us.  Love grabs us in its arms and carries us out of the charcoal and ash that loveless lives bring.

But have you ever wondered why we love love?

We love love because we are made in the image of God.  And the God whose image we are made in is a God of love.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness . .” (Genesis 1:26a, NIV)

God is love. (1 John 4:16b, NIV)

1 Corinthians 13:1, Part 1

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1, NIV)

I used to like theater much more than I do now.  Now when I go, I discover an emptiness that I didn’t notice before I belonged to Christ.

The last secular show I remember going to was a famous show.  I don’t want to go into the plot, but throughout the show there was a motif of hitting a small drum in an overwhelmingly monotonous, rhythmic pattern, and chanting Alice-in-Wonderland-type nonsense.  The theme was the circle of life–reincarnation, if you will–and how you have to let go of everything, and everyone who you love to find peace.

In the most moving scene, the main character is struggling with his mother’s death.  He has given his life to the cause of meditation, and he hadn’t seen his mother in years.  He dances with his mother in a dream, and her memory disturbs his meditation, throws him off track to knowing ‘nothing-and-everything’.  The dance is the most beautiful I have ever seen of the struggle with loss, but in the end, he releases her, and she vanishes from him.  He releases not just his mother, but the memories of his mother.  He parts with his love for his mother, and he goes back to the brain-numbing chant and the rhythmic drum.

Reflecting on a resounding gong and clanging cymbal, this play came back to mind.  The idea of giving up love for knowledge, wisdom, peace, meditation . . whatever we give it up for, the idea of giving up love.

All-but-one religions throughout history have been chanting that you need to give up love.  Love of some kind.  Love for your neighbor, who believes differently than you.  Or love for your child, to sacrifice on the altar.  Or love for the foreigner, who you mistrust.  Or love for romance, to live a celibate life.  Or love for the poor, so they can be inferior to you.  Or love for family, to join a cult.  Or love for truth, to accept the lies of false peace.

All world religions that have ever been, all but one, always ask you most of all to give up the greatest love of all: your love for God. Sacrifice God.  Lay Him on the altar and burn Him for your dreams, ambitions, power, lust, pride, ideals, relationships, etc.

But . .

God is love. (1 John 4:16b, NIV)

Without His love, our lives really are nothing more than the zombifying beat of a drum.  There really is nothing to look forward to, only an endless circle of the repeat of the endless circle of the repeat . .

But His love changes all that.

Check out: He Chose the Nails, Max Lucado (an audio of the unabridged book is available through iTunes)

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. (1 Corinthians 13:1, NIV)

A real knight

We’ve heard, haven’t we girls, about the knight in shining armor?

I thought I knew a little bit about what my knight in shining armor looked like.  But I had mostly a faraway picture, and I didn’t really know.

What I did know were snapshots and short movie replays from moments with men in my life: my father, mentors, friends, boyfriends, and Hollywood.  What I’ve seen that seemed knightly; what I’ve seen that wasn’t.  I had a sort of scrapbook of ideas, not all of which made sense together or even tried to make sense together.

I didn’t really know what my knight looked like, but I had the most critical idea right.  I knew he had to follow the Knight, Jesus Christ.  I knew that if he didn’t follow Jesus, who is the nonpareil of honor, integrity, commitment, thoughtfulness, gentleness, compassion, truth, patience, valor, courage, forgiveness, zeal, heroism, and sacrifice, no matter how “knightly” he would try to be on his own, he’d never be any of those traits.

“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (Jesus, quoted in John 15:5, NIV)

A man without Christ can try to mimic these traits, but he cannot have them within himself.  Since we are all made in the image of God, we have a knowledge and even a desire for these traits.  But Jesus teaches that they simply aren’t within us without Him, like there’s no fruit on a dead branch.

It follows from Christ’s teaching that the more passionate a man or woman is for God, the more intense the qualities of a knight or lady will be in that person.

I didn’t know much of the details of what my knight would look like.  But I did know that for him to even be a knight, he had to follow Christ, and for him to be ready for the battlefield, he had to be passionately following Him.

I have gotten to see knights from far away, or in brevity (I have dated a knight before who was a valiant knight, just not my knight), or from different perspectives than personal romance . . but to meet my own knight up close was a whole ‘nother story.  I found that, although I had a “big picture” idea of what a knight looked like, I mostly only recognized what my knight would look like from 500 feet away.  Up close, the picture was fuzzier, until recently.

Some of what I share in the following wasn’t what I thought of when I heard the word knight . . until I got to know my knight, Benjamin.

First of all, valor in day to day life doesn’t always look like how it does in the movies, but it is much, much more romantic.  Here’s what I mean: Although it’s very great to think of a knight in shining armor rescuing you from a life-or-death accident, or tracking you down after thousands of miles of searching . . opportunities for that don’t, well, don’t happen much in real life.  And even if they do happen in real life, they are usually much more fraught with nonglamor than in Hollywood.

But here are the kind of opportunities that really do happen in day to day life.  They might not seem like opportunities for a knight to step in, but oh, they definitely are.  It is opportunities like these that have drawn me close to Ben.

The opportunity to wait outside a bathroom while a plane is about to take off–a plane you are supposed to be on to take you back to your own country, but you wait anyway because you don’t want to leave the girl in the bathroom behind . .  Yep, that story really happened to me, and Ben really waited on me.  We were the last two from our group who made it through customs.  Ben waited on me, because he didn’t want me to be left behind alone.  He told me later that he figured we might have to get the next plane out of Guatemala.  Now, Ben didn’t know me very well then.  But he wasn’t willing to leave me behind.  He stayed with my luggage and he waited for me.

The opportunity to hold a girl’s hair, and the flowers you bought her, while she gags in the airport trashcan because she got very motion sick on the plane ride to see you . .  It might not be what he had in mind, but Ben loved me even when I arrived in Pennsylvania with much sickness and very little romance.

The opportunity to wait patiently for the girl who eats super slow to eat her half of the shrimp at Olive Garden . .  It’s true.  It matters.

The opportunity to pull the bandage off the girl’s arm really fast so it won’t hurt as much because she had an IV in her arm at 4 o’clock that morning because of a viral stomach bug that went on a rampage at her work . . I still flew out to see Ben the evening after my visit to ER.  He came to the airport with Capri Suns (the 100% juice kind, no high fructose corn syrup), no-salt saltines, and a tender hug.  I love him.

The opportunity to let a girl scream in a car (an enclosed space!) and not lose your temper . . Early on, I had a major blow-out that didn’t really involve Ben but that he landed in the center of.  It flared up in the car, and I snarled at him for minutes and minutes and eventually ended up screaming at him and demanding he not try to tenderly touch my hand.  This is a pretty awful story for my part, but since this is about knighthood, I want to share this one, because it’s important.  Ben could have reacted with justified anger.  He absolutely could have.  But he chose to get quieter and quieter.  He saw that, although I was extremely and inexcusably unjustified in my reaction, it was a deep spiritual wound.  He never said a word bad to me about it, ever.  He never brought it up.  I remember him asking me, gently, if it was okay for him to hold my hand again several minutes after the explosion.  I know that some would say he was weak, or stupid, but I saw in him the love of Christ and I feel radically ashamed of how I treated him . . whereas, if he’d raged back at me, I think I would not have realized as soon as I did how ugly I was being.

The opportunity to send cards, even if you used to think cards were a merchandised emotional hoax . . Ben was pretty down on commercialized cards, until I explained to him the longing I had to receive them.  I am a Hallmark commercial generation girl and romance cards are keepsakes for my love language.  Ben humbly accepted this, and began sending me card after card (even cards with photographs of puppies).  He’s given me cards with lists of things he loves about me scrawled on the inside, little drawings, his funny sweet lopsided hearts on the envelopes, and Scriptures we love.  These cards mean so much to me, and help me bridge the loneliness gap of him being so far away.  To know, too, that he does this just for me, even though in his nature he has no inclination to do so, means so much.

The opportunity to go in a crowded mall in New York on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when you’re feeling sick and really don’t like crowds anyway . . Yes, Ben did this for me.  We found Christmas gifts for my aunt and mom and we had Haagen-Dazs ice cream.  He had a bad sore throat and I loved that he came with me.

The opportunity to fight for purity . . I am so grateful for this one.  If I was the only one trying to keep us pure for marriage, it would be like one person trying to ride a two person bike while the other person dragged their feet on the sidewalk.  Disaster.  That Ben has respected my boundaries–and helped me keep them when I was slipping–speaks volumes to me about his valor.  He has loved me well by not loving me (yet) in all the ways that he could.  Since I told him my boundary of saving my first kiss for marriage, he has honored it like a true knight.  He doesn’t complain to me about it, he doesn’t push me for it, and he doesn’t even want it himself.  He knows that if he violates a limit I have, he will hurt me, and even if we both ‘give in’ in a moment, I’ll regret it later.  He honors me by fighting for my purity.

The opportunity to be there on the really tough days . . When I have been down because I miss him, or when something has been going on in my life that is hurting me, Ben wants to be there for me.  He isn’t always successful or perfect, but he tries, and that means so much to me.  He remembered my father’s birthday with me.  He remembered my father’s death day with me.  When I lost a close friend this year, he listened to me sob over the phone and he loved on me.  His eyes have such soft, tender love in them when I tell him something that hurts me.  He is so gentle with me, so patient with me, so merciful towards me.  He prays with me, prays for me, holds me close when he is near, and even cries for me.  It means so much to me that he prays and prays and prays for me, and he keeps on praying for me.

The opportunity to be stronger, but not be forceful . . Even though Ben is stronger than me, he tries to use his strength to protect me and build me up, not to intimidate me or blaze over my feelings.  This is something that I think often eludes the concept of ‘masculine’ . . Jesus, when He was on the cross, had every power in Heaven and every right to summon thousands upon thousands of angels to come pouring down and raze Jerusalem to the ground.  But . . He didn’t.  He chose instead to die for our sins.  Sometimes we think a man has to be violent or at least aggressive to be a man.  But I very much disagree.  I look at the example of Christ, and I see that strength at times chooses weakness for the sake of the weak.  Romans 5:6 is a key verse for this.

Finally, the opportunity to really love . . 1 Corinthians 13 is really what this blog has been about.  If we are in the American mindset that love is something that comes and goes, or that love is something we give only if it’s earned, or that love is something we take away to coerce and hurt . . we aren’t really pursuing becoming a knight or lady like Christ calls us to be.

Love is more than flowers and chocolates at Valentine’s Day.  It’s more than a ride on a swan boat in Venice as a maestro plays a violin.  It’s more than the day when you walk down the aisle to meet your husband or wait at the end of the aisle for your bride.  Love is truly giving of yourself for someone.  It’s all the things 1 Corinthians 13 says it is.

The image of a knight in shining armor riding on a horse is marvelous.  But to meet a real knight who waits outside the bathroom for you in a Guatemalan airport even if it means missing the flight back home . . that’s even more marvelous.

(I love you, Ben.)

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

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.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corinthians 13, NIV)

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Bitterness, rebellion, spite, abuse, selfishness, deception, regret

Love is better.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, 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. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8a, NIV)

God is love. (1 John 4:16b, NIV)

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Photograph by abcdz2000, profile on http://www.flickr.com/people/abcdz2000/

Photograph is under Creative Commons License.

See Copyright Page for Bible translation information.

Priority

Puppies are cute.  But children last forever.

I see.

No longer do I pour my money into doggy daycare, pompom cuts, high-end dog food, or buying hundreds-of-dollars dogs.  In fact, no longer do I have a dog, not because it’s wrong to have a dog, but because my money was in the exaltation of the puppy above the care of the child.

Ever since I committed my life to Christ, I have seen that my priorities . . were not God’s.  God cares more about the malnourished child in India, the sick child in Thailand, the uneducated child in Nicaragua, the child who wants after-school tutoring in Brazil, the child who wants to stay away from gangs in Kenya, the child who needs water in Tanzania, the child who has never had a celebrated birthday in Bangladesh, the child who needs a medical check-up in Peru, the child who wants to play sports in Guatemala, the orphaned child in Rwanda, the lonely child in America . . than He cares about puppies.

Children have souls.

He [Jesus] sat down, called the twelve disciples over to him, and said, “Whoever wants to be first must take last place and be the servant of everyone else.”

Then he put a little child among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them, “Anyone who welcomes a little child like this on my behalf welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not only me but also my Father who sent me.” (Mark 9:36-37, NLT)

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Photograph by Bordecia, profile on http://www.flickr.com/people/habesha/

Photograph is under Creative Commons License.

See Copyright Page for Bible translation information.

Valentine’s Day, dishwater love, and does my love prove to the world that I am His disciple?

I clicked on my daily email verse and–to no surprise since this is Valentine’s Day–the theme was love.

A lot of the time with daily Scripture verses, I peruse them quickly, click back out, and keep browsing my email.  I find my real listening to God in devoted devotion time, not in 15-second glances of verses.  But tonight, when I started to semi-speed-read through the verse, I found the words much too heavy to toss aside.

“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.” (Jesus, quoted in John 13:34-35, NLT)

Does my love prove to the world that I am Jesus’ disciple?

Wow.  Gulp.  Squirm.

For the past two and (still counting) weeks, I’ve had a cold.  I haven’t felt much good.  There’ll be times I feel like I’m getting over it, and then I feel all dragged down again.  I’ve felt discouraged, weary, and deary (discouraged and weary both at once).

Something nearly always invariably happens when I get sick anymore.  I start thinking about what God really wants me to do in this life.  I have more heart-to-hearts.  I pray more.  And I get more serious about recognizing my days are numbered.

Love—love is a hard thing for me.  There are so many ideas orbiting my head about love—I bet you have a lot, too.

I think about the ups and downs of love.  I have always been a “love surfer”, I think—quick to love when the tide is up and everything is great, and way gone when the tide is down and conflict or messes appear.

And I think about how love is like chocolate chip cookies to me.  I can’t get it out of my head.  When I want to show someone I love them, I either praise them or buy something for them or hug them.  Love is so abstract that I try to paint it into a concrete present.  As if, somehow, I can show the full meaning of love by buying someone ice cream or liking something they said on facebook.

The quick turn of love to hate.  I can be moody.  Really moody.  It doesn’t take much for me to change my mind temporarily about someone—and even though it is temporary, a great deal of damage can ravage in the wake.

The difficulty of love.  Love just seems plain hard sometimes.  Lots of work.  Effort.  Maybe even drudgery.

The forgivingness of love.  Forgiveness is like the nectar of love here on this earth.  We are fallen, broken, messed-up–and to love anyone else down here, you have to find some way to get past the bad things they’ve done.  This seems hard enough for us—we’ve got plenty of talk shows to try to cope with it—so it just seems like it would be just impossible for God.  After all, God doesn’t have this problem.  He is perfect.  He is not fallen, broken, or messed up.  It seems impossible that He would even want to bond with us.  We’re dangerous, volatile, untrustworthy.  Look at what we did to God when He gave us the opportunity: we crucified Him.  How could that God want friendship with us?

And I think about love, and I try to sort love out in my own head—but, no, that’s not really true.  Really, I know what love is.  As confusing and distracting as all the theories and memories orbiting in my mind, I do know what love is: it’s Jesus stretching His arms out on a cross to be physically, emotionally, and spiritually trapped for the sins of the world.

Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. (John 13:34b)

How can that be, Lord?

I know the kind of love I am capable of.  I can hand out brownies.  I can bake cakes in my oven.  I can reach out and touch a friend’s hand.  I can get up when I’m tired and do the dishwasher.  I can smile when I don’t feel like it.  I can write a friend when I want to go to bed.

I can look like I’m loving.  I can feel like I’m loving.

But is any of that really love?

And even if it is, is it anywhere on the love level of Christ?

I know that instantly.  It is absolutely not.

My “love” is mostly made up of me looking good, doing things to arrange for conditions I want, building beneficial relationships, quieting conflicts.  In other words, my love is really mostly about social advancements.

It is rarely the kind of love that does something regardless of whether anyone sees or whether or not it helps me climb the approval ladder of the world.  It’s mostly about me thinking about myself on video camera, and asking, How do I look to this person I am “loving”?  How do I look to the people who are watching?  What is everybody thinking?  Am I getting my point across?

Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. (Jesus, quoted in John 13:34b)

You know, there’s this crazy thing about when you see pure love.  It really stays with you.  And then you realize, it’s not about what was performed, but about what was given.

I had this time in college when my dad was dying and I was a real mess.  I remember talking to a professor and—I can’t remember how it got started—I think maybe I asked if I could have $8 for lunch money and pay him back later.  He gave me the money and absolutely refused to ever receive the money back.  But it wasn’t the $8 that stayed with me.  It was the way the professor gave it to me—freely.  Not like, “I’m doing this so God can see how good I am”, but “I’m doing this because God has done something so spectacular in my life that I think it’s worth giving $8 away to illustrate it.”

That stuck with me.

I had one of those rare moments of love last summer, I think it was.  It’s kinda crazy, because it was so small.  But it has stayed with me, too.

I was at an elderly friend’s house—a woman who has become like a sister to me.  I love her.  I really love her.  I was over at her house and she was eating lunch.

She is old-school, and doesn’t like her dishwasher.  To me, this is sheer madness.  I am pretty obsessive about clean dishes, and in my mind, dishes did not get clean by any amount of scalding water or dishsoap, unless it’s like a flood and bubbles.  I could not possibly get dishes clean enough satisfactorily by my own doing.  I trust the machine to do its job.  Die germs, die.

But I was over at her house, and I was taking away her plate, and I had this urge to wash her dishes for her.  I felt like Jesus was giving me the freedom to wash her dishes.  I know, I know, it probably sounds crazy.  But it’s true.

I do not like dirty dishwater.  Dirty dishwasher is any water in which any plates which have been eaten off of have been laid in for any amount of time.  Dirty dishwater is a festering bed of disease and soggy food (in my mind).  This is yet another reason why I do not wash dishes by hand.

And yet, with this feeling of giddyfying love—even though I was very uncertain God knew what He was doing—I stuck my hands in the dirty dishwasher and went ahead and washed her dishes.

It was something I’d wanted to do for her before, and I’d even sort-of done for her before, reluctantly, regretfully.  But this wasn’t like that.  This was joy.

And so, sticking my hands in the lukewarm, dishy sinkwater, I found love.

I remember almost shaking from the after-effects.  It wasn’t about how amazing it was that I’d stuck my hands in dirty dishwater.  I could make myself do that—I am that disciplined.  And it wasn’t about that I wanted to, ‘cause that wasn’t exactly it either.

It was that I loved her while I was doing it.

I rarely love people while I’m doing things for them.  What I am really wanting is for them to approve me, applaud me, or love me (or love me in the way I love them, the “handing out brownies” kinda way).

But when I plunged my hands in the dishwater, I loved.  The crazy thing was, it wasn’t really a love for my friend, as much as I do love her.  It was a love for Jesus.  And in that was a love for her deeper than I’d ever had.

A love that just swamped all my fears and normal adversions to dishwater and how good I’d look doing this and all the other gunk in my usual faux-love -giving world.  Not that I was perfect in any instant—far from it.  But I got a taste of love.

It was that love that literally besieged me to become a Jesus follower.  It was like a barrage on my fortress of panic, doom, and guilt.  And it came totally by surprise, in the middle of a long night of a life.

Now the funny thing is, what I’ve been thinking about—what I think God has been teaching me through this rather dreary little spell of mild sickness—is that when I was saved, I realized Christ’s love for what it was and then I went back and tried to show people His love the way I show “love”.  How in the world does that happen?

Rarely, rarely, have I had dishwater-love moments.  Instead, I’ve tried very hard to show the love of Christ to others in the way I know to show “love”—the kind-of nervous fidgets of a puppy who wants a hug.  That hasn’t been very effective.  It’s made me look just like I’ve always looked—needy.

But, really, I am not needy.  When Christ’s love crumbled the walls of my old life, I lost that neediness.  That needing others to think this of me, or do this for me, or give me a thumbs up.  But I am still so confused about how to show the love I’ve seen raining down in big boulders of forgiveness and grace, that I think I’ve pretty much tried to pick up the broken stones of my old, pathetic wall and rebuild.

This Valentine’s Day, I have a new goal.  Not to figure out who I’m going to marry or multiply my facebook friends, but to have more moments of dishwater love.

Dishwater love is when I don’t try to translate Jesus’ love through my barricade of false knowledge and my wall of past experience and my obstacle course of common sense.   Jesus isn’t going to let me try to give His love away when I distort it through the lens of my way of seeing things, anyway.  He’s going to wait for me to give the love I actually receive.

–I don’t know how to give the love I receive.  The love of Christ is so awesome.  It’s pure.  It’s divine.  It’s miraculous.  It’s unmissable.  And it’s seen as the most ridiculous thing in the world to those who don’t want it.  The love of Christ is in the vulnerability of God becoming man.  Of the Holy healing the unholy.  Of the Unbreakable breaking for the broken.  Of the Hero dying for the rebel.  Of the Physician crushing Himself to be the medicine for the uncurably sick.

But then I realize—my love can’t be that.  That is why Jesus is only Jesus.  But what my love can be—what my love can be, what my love must be is “as He has loved”.

Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. (Jesus, quoted in John 13:34b)

“As He has loved”, a professor got $8 out of his wallet to pay for a college kid’s lunch.

“As He has loved”, I stuck my hands in dirty dishwasher to wash a plate and fork.

Not the depth.  Never the depth.  Not the breadth.  Never the breadth.  Not the expanse.  Never the expanse.  Not the infinitesy.  Never the infinitesy.

But as Jesus loved, I can love, I will love.

He has shown me how.  God’s Valentine’s Day came about 2,000 years ago on a wretched hillside from an abandoned man gasping out His last hours on a cross.

That’s the love that proves everything the world has ever needed to know about God’s love.

And that’s the love that can prove, even in a life so historically loveless as mine, that God’s love is real.

I have been eternally changed by the love of the Lord Jesus.

I want to live my life proving it.

Valentine’s Day—every day.

“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, NLT)