Category Archives: a Jesus kind of love
Understanding is the Key to Loving
Today…as a “born again” Christian, liberal Democrat with four generations of gays and one grandchild who is trans and one who struggles with Autism in my family, I struggle to find the words to challenge everyone on either side of the” great divide” to work to understand each other. Understanding the other doesn’t make you change your beliefs, but it does take away the fear and the judgment of others that fuel hate and prejudice and, most importantly, being blind to their consequences. I don’t have simple answers to the most divisive issues, but I know that hate and the inability to have empathy for those different from us does not solve anything. At almost 86 I’ve just begun to experience a breakthrough on my prejudice and prejudgment of prejudiced people by actually beginning to understand others and to recognize my own blind side. When I was seventeen in the mid 1950’s, a bomb was set off in the entry to our apartment in Houston because my newspaper editor father had written an editorial supporting a black woman for the school board as representation for the black schools. This wasn’t even an integration of schools issue, just about some fair representation. That bomb took away my privileged white sense of safety and opened my eyes to the fear that black children live with all their lives. I have just begun to understand that people are born with different personalities and to realize that none of us got a vote on whether we would grow up needing the security of tradition and fearing change or with minds that questioned the status quo and embraced change. We are all ignorant in thousands of ways. Ignorance is not stupidity unless we cling to it. I was brought up to not be prejudiced against other races, but against ignorance. Finally, in my eighties I began to recognize my own ignorance of why people think differently than I do and the prejudice and pre-judging that results from that. Judging others was the sin Jesus talked most about, cautioning all of us to get free of the “log” in our own eye. I guess finally beginning to understand others even in my eighties is at least a small sign of hope for us all. Understanding frees us to love those we disagree with. We don’t have to agree, but understanding and empathy are the foundation of a Jesus kind of love.
Here are two poems written in different decades of my earlier life.
Spring I hunger to be born again/to take my hurts and failures/and mulch them into new beginnings/to turn them into fertile fields/of understanding and compassion/to experience again the greening out/of the frozen landscapes in my life/and gain a rich new Spring perspective/that builds on leaves and logs of yesteryears/to bring forth the ripe good fruit of love.
The Broken Body of Christ Reflecting on the Body/you-the hand, I-the foot/ Christ the head and heart/someone else the hidden part/ I let the Scriptures/flood my mind with images/with suddenly one image/ a moving picture/so harshly real, I gasp aloud./A person staggers/stumbles toward me/arms flailing, head jerking/back and forth in spasms/body parts all pulling different ways./This then-reality/Christ’s earthly body now./ Forgive us.
My Sermon from the Molehill
Reflections on David, God’s favorite, the ancestor of Jesus, and seemingly the most unlikely choice to fight a giant.
David reminds me of my Irish ancestors: he’s a fighter, a poet, a musician, a dancer, and a charismatic leader, who both loves and lusts. Love and lust are opposites. Love puts the other first. Lust uses the other. David actually loves Saul. To me the most amazing thing about David is that though Saul repeatedly tries to kill David out of jealousy, David continues trying to reconcile. Why? Because when David was just a youth, he often sat with this powerful man playing calming music when Saul was conflicted and overwhelmed by depression. David understood Saul. He knew his inner struggles that caused him to overreact. David finally had to turn against Saul, but he did not hate him. He was able to love someone who was violently and illogically against him because he understood him. And after decades of obeying God, when David sinned greatly and tragically, God taught him through consequences. But God still loved David tenderly and totally. Because God understands our humanity. The most fundamental and difficult challenge Christians face is to understand our enemies. We may be called to vote against them, but we are not called to hate or belittle them. We are called to love them and the only way we can do that is to understand them. And while that takes both caring and effort, what it mostly takes is humility. Jesus not only showed us it can be done, but he calls us to do it. We start by loving our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. In Jesus day, our neighbor was the person most like us. But Jesus also calls us to love the stranger, to even become vulnerable by inviting them into our safe place, our home. To top that, Jesus also began to call us to love others more than ourselves. That’s a whole other level of love. It’s the kind of love we reserve for our family. Finally, on his cross Jesus not only forgave his enemies, but he asked God to forgive them. Because he understood that they did not realize that what they were doing was evil.
Our Prayer: God, our Father, we are small, like David. We also have both strengths and weaknesses. Give us the grace we need to fight the enemy within us. Give us understanding of those we perceive as enemies outside us. Help all your children find a way to work together to bring about your kingdom, not ours, on earth as it is in Heaven. God, you are the source of our lives and the grace that sustains us. We praise you and give you thanks. We lift our hearts and minds to focus on you, so that we may see your glory and know your love with both heart and mind. We offer our lives to you in thanksgiving.
Jesus Revolution
I saw the movie, Jesus Revolution, yesterday. I realized that the Jesus revolution in the Catholic Church was the Charismatic Movement in the same times. It too stressed accepting Jesus as your personal Savior and Lord, but also prayer for receiving the gifts of the Spirit.
The gifts of the spirit are the Word of Wisdom, the Word of Knowledge, the gift of Faith, the gift of Healing, the working of Miracles, Prophecy, Discernment of spirits, diverse kinds of Tongues, the Interpretation of Tongues. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Some translations of the fruits are different)
But you can see that the gifts are for the building up of the church and the fruit would be the spiritual growth from experiencing the gifts and grace. And then there are ministries within the church such as apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers. It’s logical that these would work together for the good of not only the church, but the world.
My experience has shown me the reality of all of these. But sadly, also that our human tendency to let the temptations that Jesus resisted get the upper hand, often leads us to misuse them for our own profit and ego.
After my search and my conversion to Jesus rather than a religion, I went back to the Catholic Church. Then a Presbyterian in my ecumenical prayer group put me in contact with a Catholic Charismatic prayer group at the Sisters of Mercy’s convent. There they were experiencing what I was. Interesting to me was that the liberal and more intellectual branch of the Presbyterian church, and the Episcopal and Catholic churches with their formal worship services and very structured hierarchies, seemed to be where the Spirit was exploding. I learned that the most important fruits for leaders in this kind of renewal are faith, humility, and openness to the Spirit. In my sixty years in Catholicism, I did every ministry that women were allowed to do. I was, at best, mediocre at all of them except being Director of Religious Education for the Catholics for the Chaplains Division at Fort Campbell. There I was good at doubling the number of students, recruiting and encouraging teachers, and finding two awesome volunteers to be my right and left hands, who put in forty hours a week working as volunteers. My job was a civil service position, so I was getting paid. I am a good talent scout, recruiter, and cheerleader. I am not a leader or a teacher. I am a cheerleader. And though in the Catholic church, most of the preaching ends up as teaching. They are not the same. Preaching is inspiring others to be open not only to God, but to their gifts and ministries in the church. Everyone can experience the gifts when needed for the benefit of the church, but different personalities are better suited for different ministries.
I began attending the Presbyterian USA denomination after being in a Catholic Diocesan Ministry Training course that went two years for women. If men wanted to be Deacons….which allowed them to Baptize, officiate at Marriages, and Preach, they went a third year. I was certified to train Catechists. I was on a Diocesan Education Committee with a Priest who was a Scripture Scholar for Vatican ll, a theologian who taught at a Catholic College, A Catholic Psychiatrist, and the Diocesan Director of Religious Education. So when the men needed to have someone with credentials to write a recommendation for them to become a Deacon, they came to me for it. Most admitted to me they didn’t really “get” the Scriptures and didn’t want to preach. It was kind of the last straw for me as a woman.
I found my niche at First Presbyterian doing what I call my “Sermon from the Molehill.” I get to open our worship service and give a three to five minute “pep” talk at least once a month. It’s within my skill set and praying, reading that week’s Sunday scriptures, reflecting to see connections in my own life, writing several drafts, then timing it and editing takes me from twenty to thirty hours spread out over several days. I take any Scriptures on my Sunday as letters from God to me personally. So it’s wonderful spiritual food for me and time listening to God. And sometimes I get feedback that what I’ve said has made a difference for someone.
I miss the Charismatic Conferences at Notre Dame and I miss the music group on Saturday nights in my years in the Catholic Church, and the wonderful friends I had there, but those experiences and the amazing things I have witnessed continue to keep me tuned into God even when I am sick or dealing with worry for someone I love.
Thanks to my Methodist mother who, when I came home from Catholic school and told her she wasn’t going to heaven because she wasn’t Catholic, replied with great conviction: “Honey, you and your dad are going to get into heaven on my Methodist prayers, That was my first clue that nobody has a monopoly on God. When searching in my late twenties, I attended introductory classes in other Christian denominations and realized that each focused on parts of the Scriptures and ignored others. After my conversion to Jesus as my Savior and Lord, the Scriptures came alive and relevant to my daily life. I begam to give witness talks to Sunday School classes or was on weekend renewal teams for Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and Episcopal denominations. I found there were people in all of them who had found what I had found in Jesus, but others who had inherited their parents religions, but had missed the main point. God is alive and well in our world in spite of us! Jesus lived and died to flesh out the unconditional love of God and to show us the way to grow spiritually to learn to love as God loves us. The Spirit is within us. But sometimes we have to let go of preconceived ideas and listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, in the ‘coincidences’ in our life, and find quiet moments to hear the voice of the Spirit within us.
Pass On the Good News Your Way
A wonderful blessing of face book and other sharing internet places is that we can pass on what truths have been grace for us and their source. And those of us who feel called to share are encouraged when someone “gets” what we share and finds it helpful. A very erudite elderly priest who had founded a college in the Philippines once commented about another priest who wrote an amazing amount of novels with moral themes. He said, “That man has never had a thought he didn’t share with the world!” I don’t think he was saying it as a compliment!! Perhaps this is a difference between the ministry of an introvert and an extrovert!
I worked with the MBTI about how differences in inborn personality types affect our learning/teaching style, our very different ways of expressing love even in marriage, and the way we relate to God and with others spiritually, and how middle managers need to understand the big differences in what rewards motivate different people. I know from experience how different styles of discipline have very different responses from even my own five children.
Understanding how different we are is a huge challenge. Even knowing what I learned decades ago, now in my eighties I’m finally understanding the importance of other ways of being in the world in all aspects of life. I think for our mental, emotional, spiritual growth it takes a lot of time, challenges, and even grace to begin to value all the differences in people enough to recognize we need all of them to work together in different areas and ways and times.
As an extrovert, with all the new outlets, I tend to share everything I am currently learning or finally understanding. The hard part isn’t seeing that many people aren’t in a place in their particular journey to understand and value what I share. I, as an extrovert, struggle when I realize that many times when people actually hear and “get” what I’m saying and even apply it to their own lives, they don’t necessarily share it!
My expectation or hope that they will is admittedly mostly an ego problem. But to me it is also a spiritual problem for our world…..not that my insights are world changing. But so much of mine do come from my spiritual journey and the totally unconditional Love that God has expressed in Jesus. I don’t think I would have them without that grace. And I realize again that people whose strength is responding intellectually and people whose gift is responding emotionally are on a different schedule on their journey. And a whole person response to Jesus takes both. Once more that is a reason for us to value both those who value law and those who respond to Love and find a way to work together since it takes a lifetime to get those two sides of us working equally well.
I hope that makes sense.
In my youth I played by the rules mostly out of fear of rejection or judgment by others. After I was simply overwhelmed by an experience of the love of God, I struggled with the feeling that the law was a prison of sorts that limited curiosity and creativity. So, one day as I was doing breakfast dishes, I prayed, “Lord would you show me how law is loving.”
The next moment I heard a thumping at the door. When I opened it, our dog had dropped a bird there. The bird was flopping around and seemed to have a broken wing. I brought the bird in and wrapped a dish towel around it, to keep the wing straight. I decided to make a sort of incubator to keep it still in a round bowl on the stove near a kettle steaming slightly for warmth. It simply wouldn’t accept the limits, thrashing around and almost throwing itself against the hot kettle. So, I wrapped it with a larger towel carefully and held it, trying to soothe and eventually trying to feed it. It simply thrashed and fought until it died. As I was burying it, it hit me. The law is our incubator until we become spiritually mature enough to love others as we love ourselves and to accept the limits that requires. Let’s face it, that takes time and a lot of grace.
Consequences are built into life and if we cannot accept limits, we end up learning the hard way. We are unfinished people at every age. It takes a lifetime of challenges and grace to learn to love others not only as ourselves, but as God loved us in Jesus.
If we believe intellectually in the God of Jesus or have been awakened by an experience of that Love, we are called to share in both word and deed using whatever gifts God has given us and working together at encouraging and helping others to do the same.
Jesus fleshed out God’s Love for us. Pass it on.
How Many Loving People Are Needed to Save the World?
In the Scriptures Noah and his family are saved from the flood because they were good people. Abraham bargains with God to save the people in an evil city, “If ten people are righteous, will you spare it?” We might look at Jesus as the one righteous human, convincing God we are worth saving. I read a book once called the “Hundredth Monkey” about how on an island certain monkeys learned a new survival skill and when the number reached 100, they all seemed to “get” it. And it was found that the same thing was happening with monkeys on other islands. Sunday’s scripture from Isaiah was about the “people of God” having been through dark times, but now God was doing an new thing and they would be blessed. How many people learning to love rather than hate or fear others do you think it would take for change to happen in our world? If you are given the grace to be one by your knowing first-hand the love of Jesus, please please share it!!!! Love, not law, changes people. We can love and help people, but the Love of God fleshed out in Jesus can heal and change wounded frightened angry people. Find a way to share it, not impose it, or come over as righteous or chosen. Those of us who have accepted that love need to admit how much we needed it and how much we still need it and how that love is the grace we all need to become the people we were created to be. (Not like anyone else, just our own best imperfect human self.) The Love of Jesus is the fuel for the spiritual journey until our last breath. Share it! It can make a difference for other people and maybe if enough people open up to that love it can make a difference for our world. This isn’t about being chosen or saved this is about being healed and changed by Love that has no conditions. It’s about grace.
Good Guys and Sinners
My husband was a “do right.” He really was a good guy. But until his last couple of years in life, he didn’t experience the joy of God’s unconditional love. He thought it was because he was a prodigal son. But it seemed to me that he was the older brother who thought he had to earn the father’s love. Being a good person to get to heaven or be loved, is not a bad thing. But it’s not a joyful grace thing either. And it’s much harder to get rid of our ego, when so much is riding on it. Those of us who have trouble being strong and good, when we experience being loved unconditionally, it’s not only joyful, but a source of grace for us in our weak times. We still have to struggle sometimes, but we don’t want to lose that joy. And once we tune in to God actually being active in our lives, we recognize His trying to show us when we are about to do something harmful and seriously stupid. Once we have the eyes to see and the ears to hear, it’s totally mind blowing how active God is in our lives, because he loves us, idiots that we are. I know where of I speak! What an awesome loving actively involved God we have. (Whether we like it or not!)
Let’s Pretend Our Own Christmas Story
Let’s pretend Jesus knocked on your door in the Christmas season to join you for his birthday celebration.
Can you picture him standing there when you open the door? Can you feel your dawning recognition and surprise? Can you sense your moment of doubt, then feel it washed away by sheer joy? Do his eyes have laughter lines as he smiles with just a hint of fun at surprising you? Does his simple kindness surround you like a comforter?
Picture you inviting him in, stammering as you start to reach out to shake his hand, only to be embraced in a warm hug that brings tears of happiness and wonder to your eyes.
Let’s imagine how he might like to celebrate his birthday with you. Do you think he’d be happy if you asked him to sit down, then hurried to get the best lotion in the house to gently rub his worn and callused feet? Would he want to do the same for you? Would you protest because you feel unworthy? Or would you let him help you feel so very tenderly loved?
Maybe he’d accept a cup of coffee and then want to tell you the stories his mom used to tell over and over about giving birth in a dirty drafty barn and about the terror of having to flee to a foreign country in the middle of the night with only a few clothes and a little food.
Do you think Jesus might just try to fit in by eating second helpings and then nodding off now and then in front of the TV set like most of us do? Or would he possibly suggest, “Why don’t we pack up some of this turkey and dressing and yes, definitely some pie, to take to families living in small rooms at some of the local Motels?” Might he even ask, “Would you drive me up and down the interstate to check under the bridges for homeless who may need food?”
Or perhaps he’d gently make a more discomforting suggestion: that some presents could be returned and the money sent to help refugees fleeing with their children like his parents did.
Maybe he would just look into your eyes all the way to what’s hidden in your heart and quietly say, “If there is someone you have hurt or anyone who has wounded you, will you make me happy by using your phone now to reconcile with them?”
And then you’d remember what he said at that last dinner with his closest friends, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Then you’d feel not guilt, but regret, that you hadn’t thought of celebrating his birthday by doing more for others, even strangers, as he did his whole life.
So, you’d get your coat and gather food, even your favorite fudge pie, to take to others. And you’d see that he was smiling at you as he waved goodbye.
You wouldn’t feel condemnation, only his love and a stronger desire to love others as he loves you. Because now you’d really know that God did not send his Son into the world to condemn us, but to free us by his love.
And as you start out, you’d whisper, “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” And you would know he heard.
A Christmas Blessing
During Advent each year, I pray daily, “Come, Lord Jesus.” Then I wait eagerly for that special moment that helps me recognize His presence.
Many years ago, shortly before Christmas, my almost four-years-old granddaughter spent the night with me. She had been diagnosed as having Autism at two years of age. I asked God to somehow bless our time together. At that time, most words had no meaning for her. When we spoke to her, she either echoed what we said or resorted to a repetition of dialogue from a Disney video. She could only express simple requests, most often in sign language.
That evening she set up her tea set on our kitchen table and to my surprise said clearly, “Have a tea party.”
So she and I took turns pouring imaginary tea and saying “Thank you” to one another. To break a long silence, I mentioner her little sister being sick. She responded by chattering incomprehensively to her image in the window, but then turned to look at me and said clearly, “Cat’s go meow, dogs go woof-woof, cows go moo and birds go cheep-cheep.”
I was both startled and touched, because she was describing communication of others without language. And this was the longest understandable communication I had ever heard from her. Then she yawned and a moment later smiled at me and said, “We go nighty-night” and led me to bed. There for the first time ever, she snuggled close and patted me, saying, “Nighty-night.”
This amount of understandable communication, direct eye contact, and her initiation of a physical show of affection with sustained physical closeness were all completely new.
I thought of the Scripture in Second Corinthians where Paul quotes Jesus, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” With silent tears of joy, I recognized the presence of God and His grace within her and my heart overflowed with love for my wonderful little granddaughter.
God in the Galaxies and in Humanity
by Madeleine L’Engle
Best known for her works of fiction, author Madeleine L’Engle (1918–2007) was a devoted Christian who perceived God’s presence in all things and circumstances. Here she invites readers to join her awe-filled observations:
I look at the stars and wonder. How old is the universe? . . . All we know is that once upon a time or, rather, once before time, Christ called everything into being in a great breath of creativity—waters, land, green growing things, birds and beasts, and finally human creatures—the beginning, the genesis, not in ordinary Earth days; the Bible makes it quite clear that God’s time is different from our time. A thousand years for us is no more than the blink of an eye to God. But in God’s good time the universe came into being, opening up from a tiny flower of nothingness to great clouds of hydrogen gas to swirling galaxies. In God’s good time came solar systems and planets and ultimately this planet on which I stand on this autumn evening as the Earth makes its graceful dance around the sun. It takes one Earth day, one Earth night, to make a full turn, part of the intricate pattern of the universe. And God called it good, very good.
A sky full of God’s children! Each galaxy, each star, each living creature, every particle and sub-atomic particle of creation, we are all children of the Maker. From a sub-atomic particle with a life span of a few seconds, to a galaxy with a life span of billions of years, to us human creatures somewhere in the middle in size and age, we are . . . children of God, made in God’s image.
L’Engle honors the unique role that Jesus as Christ plays in creation:
Don’t try to explain the Incarnation to me! It is further from being explainable than the furthest star in the furthest galaxy. It is love, God’s limitless love enfleshing that love into the form of a human being, Jesus, the Christ, fully human and fully divine.
Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, Christ, the Maker of the universe or perhaps many universes, willingly and lovingly leaving all that power and coming to this poor, sin-filled planet to live with us for a few years to show us what we ought to be and could be. Christ came to us as Jesus of Nazareth, wholly human and wholly divine, to show us what it means to be made in God’s image. Jesus, as Paul reminds us, was the firstborn of many brethren [Romans 8:29].
I stand on the deck of my cottage, looking at a sky full of God’s children, knowing that I am one of many brethren, and sistren, too, and that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Bathed in this love, I go into the cottage and to bed.
