love

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Love Letters

Pete's lettersI’m pretty consistent about reading my Bible. Not perfect, mind you. Sometimes life gets in the way, sometimes I get distracted. For the most part, though, I try to read at least a chapter (or more, if they’re short or in Numbers) every morning. I always imagine it as God and I sitting down over a cup of tea, having our own little tête-à-tête.

Recently I’ve been rereading the gospels, first Matthew, then John. Pen and straight edge in hand (I’m a bit compulsive about neat annotations), I was underlining verses that particularly spoke to me, inscribing comments in the margin to remind myself later of what I was learning.

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Babies

Willow and Karin April 2013Babies. I definitely have babies on my mind this week.

Our granddaughter is visiting from the Pacific Northwest and I’m treasuring every moment. After 14 months, Willow’s parents have already lost a lot of sleep on her behalf. They’ve spent a fortune on medical bills (she was five weeks premature), baby furniture, clothes, diapers, and the gazillion other things a baby needs in our culture. And they’d do it all again, because they love her!

Our family went to a Chinese restaurant for lunch yesterday. Instead of ordering a whole meal for a baby, we each agreed to share some food off our plates. Willow enthusiastically gummed down everything from red bell peppers, tofu, and egg roll to mu shu pork and bits of scrambled egg and dried lilies fished out of my hot and sour soup. She ate a lot! Why would I give her so much of my lunch that I needed a snack when we got home? Of course, it’s because I love her!

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God’s a Father Too

presentsThis Sunday is Father’s Day. You remembered, right? If you believe the ads, we’re all supposed to run out and buy our dads a tie / polo shirt / hand tool / golf club and wrap it up in manly paper. Along with that, we’re to buy a card thanking him for fixing everything / providing money / putting up with our youthful selves, and promising him a day in the hammock / on the golf course / at the BBQ.

You’ve made your gift list… something for your dad: check. Your father-in-law: check. If you’re a mom, the father of your children: check. If you have grandchildren, don’t forget to include your son or son-in-law. Now you can relax and look forward to the big day!

Well, there’s someone you forgot. Or should I say Someone. Ohhh, right, God is our Father too. Good grief, what do we give God for Father’s Day?

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What’s In A Name?

“While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper,… ”

I’ve read Matthew 26 plenty of times, and skimmed right over verse 6 on the way to the “good part”—where an unnamed woman anoints Jesus with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume. But as often happens when I reread familiar passages, this time the Holy Spirit pointed out something I’d missed before.

Simon the Leper. This man, who surely had other, more positive aspects to his person, was known to everyone as “Simon the Leper.” His disease defined him.

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Resurrection Sunday

Easter is my favorite day of the year—Resurrection Sunday, the reason for my faith in Jesus and my hope of heaven. While Christmas is buried under tons of tradition, Easter has escaped relatively unscathed. Perhaps that’s why I like it best.

Sure, Easter gets mingled with the renewal of springtime. When I was small, my secular parents observed this holiest of days with jelly beans and marshmallow peeps, a chocolate bunny and perhaps an Easter egg hunt. But there are still ways to focus on the significance of the resurrection. When I became a Christian at age 18, I started attending the sunrise service held on our college campus. I can still imagine every detail of the warm spring sunshine (it was California), green leaves, singing birds. We sat on the dew-covered grass and listened to a pastor from a local church praise God for the resurrection. And we sang:

Hear the bells ringing. They’re singing that you can be born again. Hear the bells ringing. They’re singing Christ is risen from the dead.

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Loving God

I felt like a failure. All around me, people were praying, weeping, wailing—overcome with love for God. I sat like a stone. Sure, I wanted to love God. I tried to love God. But never in my almost 40 years of being a believer have I ever felt the overwhelming emotion of those surrounding me at the prayer conference I was attending. Dry eyes, dry thoughts—there must be something wrong with my faith.

After all, I usually feel quite emotional when my thoughts turn to my husband. Sure, we have our moments, but overall I’m even more in love with him now, after 30+ years of marriage, than I was the day we said our vows. Why couldn’t I summon those same emotions for God?

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Love (on) Cynthia’s Blog

2heartsIn honor of Valentine’s Day, I was all set to write an interesting, well-reasoned,  and relevant post about love. Then my friend Cynthia went and beat me to it, and she did a much better job than I would have done.

Since I’m out of town and on vacation (and working on spoiling my granddaughter), I’m sending you over to Cynthia’s blog, Let’s Talk. I hope your find her thoughts on “Love with Knowledge and Discernment“ as helpful as I did. Happy Valentine’s Day.

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God’s a Meanie!

“How can you be a Christian? There’s no way I’d worship a God who is that mean!”

How often have we heard God described as angry, bloodthirsty, or just plain mean? I know several people who refuse to consider Christianity because of God’s unsavory reputation. Is he really that vengeful and vindictive? I think it depends on one’s perspective.

We’re all familiar with the stories of God wiping out pagan tribes. I’ve always assumed that these peoples were so awful, so evil, that the world was better without them. They practiced human sacrifice and worshipped demons disguised as idols. God could have eliminated them by himself (as with Sodom and Gomorrah), but he used the Israelites to cleanse the land so they would understand just how bad sin is. Perhaps I’m missing something, but this is an explanation I can live with.

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Loving One Another

Continuing the series on What to Give God for Christmas…

Jesus didn’t stop with telling us to love God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength. He wants us to love other people as much as he loves them. That’s a tall order! How do we go about loving others?

There are as many ways to love others as there are others to love. This is where we get to be a bit creative.

By all means, do something special for those on your Christmas list. One of my love languages is “gifts” so I can appreciate how well a carefully chosen present will convey the love of the person giving it. Even here, there are ways to help others while blessing your friends and family. I always check out the gifts on fair trade websites, especially for those hard-to-shop-for people; these organizations are a good source of handmade, one-of-a-kind items. For starters, I recommend Trade As One. I’ve been more than pleased with both their products and their service. (See last year’s post on fair trade.)

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Grief and Grace

I had already written something for today, a continuation of my series on what to give God for Christmas. Then I heard the news about the school shooting in Connecticut. And like you, I was shaken to the core. It was all too easy to remember our daughters at that age, or to consider that our granddaughter will be going to school in a few short years. I honestly don’t know how the families involved are going to survive this. It’s only by the grace of God.

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