Having a Heart in a Sometimes Heartless World
Day 217 – Week 31 - At A Glance
Scripture focus: For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. Galatians 5:14 The Message
As we begin this month of devotionals, our propensity to do whatever we want to do – driven by our lust – seems to be a potential problem for living truly free. In Galatians, Paul encourages us to consider the fact that we’re only truly free when we’re loving others.
But I see another potential pitfall in today’s scripture focus. Paul is assuming that we know how to respect/love/care for ourselves. This is a crucial point. It’s in learning how to live healthy, balanced lives that we gain the skill sets, wisdom and discernment to know how to love others well. Sometimes people ask us to serve them, but in a way that is a disservice to them. Other times, love compels us to serve – even when it is inconvenient, and we have plenty of good reasons to pass up the moment in favor of doing something else – that we really want to do. Love isn’t always saying “yes” to every request; nor is it limited to doing what we feel like. How do we decide what love looks like? I think it comes through gaining personal experience with loving ourselves in a healthy manner. How did Michael know (see devotional day 215) that he shouldn’t encourage this young boy to stay home from VBS simply because he could? Because he had learned that same lesson himself.
In the novel Steppenwolfe, Hermann Hesse writes of one of his characters: “As for others and the world around him he never ceased in his heroic and earnest endeavor to love them, to be just to them, to do them no harm, for the love of his neighbor was as deeply in him as the hatred of himself, and so his whole life was an example that love of one’s neighbor is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.” Steppenwolfe, a novel by Herman Hesse, page 11.
Evidently, this character knew the right thing to do – love his neighbor; but he had no clue how to actually accomplish that grand calling.
If we’re going to learn what it truly means to live free, we’re going to need a heart renovation. Knowing what we should do will not equip us to actually accomplish the task! But he gives us more grace. And so, it is my prayer, that God give us more grace. May he give us the grace to dare to love like him. May he give us the grace to serve others, even when we’d prefer to do whatever we want to do. May he free us from the experience of unintended consequences, and instead, grant us freedom.
Recommended reading: In the morning read 2 Chronicles 35, 36; in the evening read 1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 25.
As we begin this month of devotionals, our propensity to do whatever we want to do – driven by our lust – seems to be a potential problem for living truly free. In Galatians, Paul encourages us to consider the fact that we’re only truly free when we’re loving others.
But I see another potential pitfall in today’s scripture focus. Paul is assuming that we know how to respect/love/care for ourselves. This is a crucial point. It’s in learning how to live healthy, balanced lives that we gain the skill sets, wisdom and discernment to know how to love others well. Sometimes people ask us to serve them, but in a way that is a disservice to them. Other times, love compels us to serve – even when it is inconvenient, and we have plenty of good reasons to pass up the moment in favor of doing something else – that we really want to do. Love isn’t always saying “yes” to every request; nor is it limited to doing what we feel like. How do we decide what love looks like? I think it comes through gaining personal experience with loving ourselves in a healthy manner. How did Michael know (see devotional day 215) that he shouldn’t encourage this young boy to stay home from VBS simply because he could? Because he had learned that same lesson himself.
In the novel Steppenwolfe, Hermann Hesse writes of one of his characters: “As for others and the world around him he never ceased in his heroic and earnest endeavor to love them, to be just to them, to do them no harm, for the love of his neighbor was as deeply in him as the hatred of himself, and so his whole life was an example that love of one’s neighbor is not possible without love of oneself, and that self-hate is really the same thing as sheer egoism, and in the long run breeds the same cruel isolation and despair.” Steppenwolfe, a novel by Herman Hesse, page 11.
Evidently, this character knew the right thing to do – love his neighbor; but he had no clue how to actually accomplish that grand calling.
If we’re going to learn what it truly means to live free, we’re going to need a heart renovation. Knowing what we should do will not equip us to actually accomplish the task! But he gives us more grace. And so, it is my prayer, that God give us more grace. May he give us the grace to dare to love like him. May he give us the grace to serve others, even when we’d prefer to do whatever we want to do. May he free us from the experience of unintended consequences, and instead, grant us freedom.
Recommended reading: In the morning read 2 Chronicles 35, 36; in the evening read 1 Corinthians 1, Psalm 25.
Copyright 2008 Northstar Community
No comments:
Post a Comment