November 20, 2011 A Tale of Two Tamars

A young friend of mine texted me recently in anger. She was working on a Bible study, of all things, but she was fit to be tied. Who had stirred her up? None other than King David, the man scripture says was a "man after God's own heart" (1st Samuel 13:14). The author of most of the Book of Psalms. He's in the lineage of Jesus, the Messiah who is called "Son of David" (Matthew 22:41).

Or, if you prefer, the David sung about in one of my favorite pop tunes, Hallelujah: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kB67HO8tkQs

David was a wreck, no question. He made some very bad decisions along the road, but still, his heart was for God. This doesn't make me angry -- it gives me hope! I also make decisions every day that are far from pure and perfect.

To borrow something else from Shrek (the link above goes to Rufus Wainwright's cover of Hallelujah for that movie's soundtrack) people are like onions. We have layers. Think of our choices, our decisions, our behavior, as outer layers. Further down, beyond the selfishness and pride and lust and fear that often drives us and our decisions, can still beat a heart that truly loves God and wants to see his purposes fulfilled. 


I'd like to think that I am a woman after God's heart, despite the fact that I am, quite often, worse than the king in question.


But I digress. I titled this "A Tale of Two Tamars." Tamar was one of David's daughters, and I'll get back to her in a minute. The other Tamar has just as interesting a story, but with a happier ending. Eventually.


It will help, while you're reading about Tamar and her father-in-law Judah, to take yourself out of the realm of westernized Christianity, and try to put yourself in the world of Tamar. Her story is in Genesis, before Moses and the Law, in the Middle East, not our Mideast. People often try to see scripture through the smeared glasses of the West, and that's unfair.


Judah is a big deal in the Bible. Jesus the Messiah is called the Lion of Judah (Revelation 5:5). The very name for God's chosen people, the Jews, is a derivative of Judah, the son of Jacob and his wife Leah. Right off the bat, we come up against our cultural differences: Jacob had two wives, and his wives gave him their two maids to have children by! Instead of gasping in disbelief that God would work through such circumstances, we need to just get over ourselves. Different time. Different culture. Same God.


So. Tamar married Er, Judah's oldest son. Er died (gasp alert: Genesis 38:7 says "the Lord put him to death." WTF? Wrong This Feels!) Big Daddy Judah gives Tamar in marriage to his next son Onan. We don't know if Onan already had a wife (as if that would have married) but we do know that Onan made a name for himself by ejaculating onto the ground, rather than risk getting his sister-in-law-turned-bride pregnant (onanism is  a synonym for masturbation or self-gratification).


See, in those days, if Tamar had had a baby, the baby would have inherited Er's property. In other words, Onan selfishly only wanted children that would enhance his own financial prospects, not those of the line of his dead brother. The Father of Self-Gratification. He didn't, however, live long enough to see his name in lights, or long enough to do much of anything. His actions were deemed "wicked in the Lord's sight" and he got the same divine retribution as did big brother Er.


Poor Tamar! If she was starting to feel like it was somehow her fault, we can sympathize. Judah was certainly thinking along those lines. Next in line for the young widow would have been Son #3, Shelah. Judah told Tamar to go back to her father's house and wait there for Shelah to grow up, hoping to avoid Shelah's untimely death as well.


The Bible says "after a long time" Judah's own wife died. Shelah was a man by then but Tamar hadn't been sent for. Hearing that Judah's time of grieving is over, she set off on a risky adventure. 


This is where you have to set aside your own concept of righteousness and morality.

Picture it: Tamar poses as a prostitute, somehow knowing that Judah will approach her for, um, attention. She agrees to sleep with him for a young goat, and further demands several personal belongings to prove she has been with him and that he is, thus, obligated to her in this matter. He agrees, they have sex, he gives her the things, they go their seperate ways. She, back to widow's clothes at home with her family. He, to his own home.


A man of his word(!), Judah tries to send the goat to the girl, but his right-hand-man is unable to locate her. There ARE no prostitutes around those parts. Judah drops the matter, wanting to escape further embarrassment. She can keep the dang belongings. End of story.


Not quite.


A few months go by and he hears an ugly, troubling rumor. His former daughter-in-law Tamar has apparently been fooling around, bringing shame upon both families. A true sweetheart, Judah demands that she be brought to him in order to burn her to death. (And you think you;ve got in-law problems?)


I'm guessing that Tamar trembles as she delivers the  coup de grace. This is one gutsy lady, going through all of this just to have a child, thereby honoring the memory of her first husband...and, no doubt, helping secure her own position in her society. "I am pregnant by the man who owns these," she announces, handing over the personal belongings Judah left in trust.


Get this. 


Judah says," 'She is more righteous than I, since I wouldn't give her to my son Shelah.' And he did not sleep with her again" (Genesis 38:26). Tamar was not only blessed with one child, but two. Not only that, but the firstborn, Perez, is in the lineage of Jesus. In Matthew 1, Tamar herself is mentioned, only one of four women mentioned there.


Talk about a roundabout way to fulfill God's plan! 


The other Tamar...well, I think I'll wait on her until next time. She didn't have a happy ending, and that's why my young friend was angry. This is Thanksgiving week...not a good week to get angry at God, in case you might agree with her. Always time for that later (but never a good idea).


Happy Thanksgiving!

November 13, 2011 Blazing Hearths

My young friend Diane Byrne posted this quote on her Facebook page:

‎"One may have a blazing hearth in one's soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way."

                                                                                                                                                  Vincent Van Gogh

I love that! It reminds me of another quote I copied and have kept within sight for over a decade:

I love you for putting your hand into my heaped-up heart and passing over all the foolish, weak things that you can't help dimly seeing there, and for drawing out into the light all the beautiful belongings that no one else had looked quite far enough to find.

I've seen those words in the form of poetry, author unknown, but I prefer them as prose, words one might write to a best friend or close family member. Both quotes imply that while we encounter multitudes of people throughout our lives, only one or two (if we are truly blessed) will take the time and trouble to know us fully. Warts and all, as my mother would say.

Olivia de Havilland and James Cagney

My mother is a self-admitted romantic, a believer in true love. She grew up going to movies every Saturday at a time when Hollywood focused on boy-meets-girl and happily-ever-after endings. She sat in the darkened theater in Albemarle, North Carolina as a sort of university of romance, instructed by the likes of Olivia de Havilland and Spencer Tracy. 

And one night, on her first date with a new teacher in town as he chaperoned a high school dance, they took to the floor and danced. Just like in the movies, the crowd parted as kids backed up to watch them in appreciation of their skills. Growing up in Chapel Hill, my dad says he had to learn to dance well to compete, as a high schooler, with college guys. It paid off that night, for sure.

They got married, and lived happily ever after, right? Well...I doubt that either one of them would tell you it's been all sunshine and flowers. They have had many challenges and heartaches. Recently settled into an assisted living facility, they are making new friends and getting involved with people they would have never met any other way or any other circumstances.

Where am I going with this? Just that we come into contact with so many people. Hundreds, thousands, of people who waltz through our lives for a few measures and then are gone. Some of them step on our feet. We step on theirs. Some insist on doing the watusi instead, making us look foolish. Some want us to lead, some want to lead us where we don't want to go. A few hang around for an entire song. Even fewer are there for the whole night, talking to us whether there is music or not.

We may remember with great affection someone we danced with only once, never to see again. We may regret declining to dance with someone else, or may regret dancing with another in the first place. A person can spin us around a few minutes and then retreat into the shadows, just out of sight, only to appear much later and share the best dance of all at the end of the evening.

Peasant Woman by a Hearth
by Vincent Van Gogh

In other words, my parents are meeting new friends at 78 and 80 who may or may not become close friends, over whose lives they may or may not have great influence. Their marriage of over 50 years is, in some ways, sweeter now than ever, simplified as it is by the absence of financial worries and the normal stresses of work and teenagers and life.

And I, at 53, so appreciate those few who have stopped to sit by the fire that is my heart's hearth and warm themselves for a time. Who have looked further into my soul than anyone else, and who love me still.

And P.S. Happy birthday on November 14 to my beautiful daughter Becky, whose presence in my life has been a delight for 30 years. I well remember turning 30, and I hope her 30th year is her best ever. I love you!

October 30, 2011 Occupying

I'll admit it. I haven't studied the whole "Occupy Wall Street" movement in depth. I did listen to a Dave Ramsey show in which he invited OWS supporters to call in and explain their personal reasons for joining and frankly, I was unimpressed. Every caller was angry about something, but not a single one, even the more articulate angry people (AAP), could offer a suggestion as to resolving the issues that angered him. And I say "him" in the specific, rather than the sexist, sense as every caller I heard was male.

I gather than some people are supportive for that very reason, however: anger is good. It means people are thinking. It means people are asking Important Questions. It means people are doing something.

It just feels like a lot of what they are doing is throwing a tantrum, making a mess where they decide to camp, and messing with law enforcement. It grieved me to read that Scott Olsen, a soldier who served in Iraq, was injured in an OWS/police confrontation, but it grieved me even more that people were blaming the police! Whatever your politics, when the po-po says you've got to stop, you'd better stop, or be willing to sacrifice along the lines of Mohandas K. Gandhi's civil disobedience in India. (There are conflicting reports as to who threw what, but you don't want to see anyone hurt when it could so easily be avoided.)

Note: Gandhi did not throw things, or yell, or spit, or litter. He discouraged anything of the sort. The principal of ahimsa, or nonviolence, pulled the rug out from under Great Britain and achieved the unthinkable--complete independence for India. It was achieved, not by a group of loud, complaining radicals calling themselves Occupy Delhi, but by dedicated people willing to lay down their lives for a just cause.

I just don't think Gandhi would have been there with the Canadian-started OWS. I don't think they would have asked him to speak, because he would have fussed about their behavior. And that alone makes me uncomfortable.

Do we have serious problems in the financial sector of the United States? Absolutely. Is there unjustifiable polarization between the have's and the have not's? Again, yes. The Bible even has something to say about this, although I have yet to hear an OWS quote James 5 (NIV):

 ¹ Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. ²Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. ³ Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. ⁴ Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. ⁵ You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.⁶ You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you.

Them's fightin' words! Pretty strong stuff for those who use their wealth irresponsibly and immorally. Those words serve as a warning to all who oppress the less-fortunate -- justice will come eventually. If nothing else, there is the fact that no one, not Howard Hughes, not Bill Gates, not the Donald, not the sheik, no one, gets out of this place alive. We will all die, all face a final judgment. All debts against God will be paid, whether by standing before the throne and saying, "Well, yes, I was a monumental sinner and screw-up, but I think Jesus has something to say now..." at which point our Advocate takes over, reminding the Father that he already paid for the the sins in question....or by eternal suffering and separation from a loving God.

So there's THAT aspect of what-goes-around-comes-around for the screw-ups of Wall Street (and every other street, for that matter) to bear in mind, but there are also peaceful, workable solutions possible that don't involve littering city streets and engaging in violence toward law enforcement.

And the anger aspect? Aside from the fact that it is bad publicity, there is a time for anger according to this verse:

BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger (Ephesians 4:25, NASV).

We are made in God's image, and God gets angry. I won't list them, but God's wrath against the wicked, God's anger at unrighteousness, it's all there. Look it up. Jesus himself, whom I've never pictured as the anemic meek-and-mild character hung on many Sunday school walls, took a whip to the money-changers who defiled the temple. Sometimes, anger is the reasonable response.

OWS has every right to be angry. So do you. So do I. Our government has failed us in many ways. Financial gurus have created a culture of debt, but whose responsibility is it when we purchase on credit and wind up paying high interest on sums twice, thrice, the original amount we borrowed? That's no one's fault but our own.

OWS (and all the rest of us) have valid reasons for being angry. They have valid concerns -- I'm always skeptical of "demands," especially when the demander has no way to enforce them -- but there are better ways of affecting change than costing the New York Police Department millions of dollars in overtime, and creating a colossal mess in the process. If their motives were all that great and they were themselves obeying the laws of the land, they wouldn't require all that policing. Or, if they were like Gandhi, they would sit there silently and take whatever came. That would, at least, have more impact on the nation.

The question is: does OWS really want change? Or just attention?

October 2, 2011 Happy New Year!

Anyone who follows this blog know that it is unlikely I am three months early with anything. Not that I am habitually late with this blog, or anything. Habitually is a harsh word, in my opinion. I prefer "tendency," as in I have a tendency to veer off the self-prescribed two week period between blogs.

I refer not to New Year's Day, January 1, 2012, but the New Year 5772 on the Jewish calendar which fell on Thursday, September 29 on the "regular" calendar, the 1st of Tishri on the Jewish one. Also known as Rosh Hashana, the "head of the year," the differences go beyond the date. Rosh Hashana marks not only the beginning of the calendar year, but the beginning of the 10 days of repentance ending with Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It is a time of celebration, of acknowledging God's kingship over one's life, but it is also a time of introspection and confession.

Typically, Americans spend New Year's Eve at parties or sitting up watching the ball drop in Times Square on television. The more spiritual segment of society  might pass the night at a watch service, in prayer for the people partying their lives away. On New Year's Day in the South, at least, greens and black eyed peas (the food, not the band) are customary in many homes. Some people write a list of resolutions.

My personal, fairly ironclad New Year's tradition involves going to sleep at the normal hour on December 31 and waking up January 1. The past few years, I enjoyed a mimosa brunch with some of the folks at Lillington Presbyterian Church in North Carolina followed by a devotional. This year, I will probably have to pass, having moved back to Florida. More mimosas for everyone else!

I had the pleasure of attending an Ev Rosh Hashanah service last week. There were readings in Hebrew and English, Israeli-flavored worship dancing, singing, prayer, and the blowing of the shofar, or ram's horn. There is something about that lone, ancient sound that goes straight to the heart.

After the service, we ate the traditional challah bread with...bleh....grape juice. Did I mention this was a messianic synagogue's service? Perhaps that is the reason God's original fruit of the vine (wine!) was neglected. At any rate, prayers were said in thanksgiving for grain and vine, as well as for fruit. Apples with honey were included. I doubt anyone minded that the customary fish or ram's head was overlooked.

The following day, there was to be a service at a local river park, which I did not attend. Stones would be gathered representing a particular sin in one's life to be cast into the water, symbolic of God's promise in Micah 7:19 to cast our sins into the "sea of forgetfulness."

So with all this going on, I have been thinking about forgiveness, and the idea that we are fairly clueless about the scope and depth of God's forgiveness, perhaps because we have such trouble forgiving others and ourselves. Do we really believe, as the story goes, that when we have asked for God's forgiveness and then...still feeling guilty... ask again, he says, "What are you talking about?" Do we really believe that Jesus died not only to erase the eternal power of the sin nature we inherited at birth but also each and every sin that each and every person had ever and would ever commit? Do we really believe that forgiveness is not only available but freely given to all who ask for it? Could it possibly be that simple? That Jesus, knowing we were unable to live righteously, offered himself as a sacrifice for our collective sin/sins, once for all, and that it isn't so much our asking God to forgive us, but our own acceptance of what he has already done?

We all have regrets, things we should not have said or done or thought. Things we wanted to do enough to carry them out, fully realizing  that they were wrong and potentially hurtful to others. Things that were contrary to God's Law, maybe even man's. While I can think of a multitude of things I have done that were wrong, I can think of a few things I was guilty of that have never been completely forgiven by those I hurt. Occasionally, past mistakes still haunt through the helpful "reminders" of others who can't, or won't, let go. It is a good reminder to me, when this happens, to check my own heart: Have I forgiven him, her? Is there anything between this person and me? We need to forgive if only because we need it ourselves so very often.

Maybe you, like me, have not been forgiven by someone you wronged, or who believes that you wronged them. That is not God's heart. God is love, and love "keeps no record of being wronged," according to 1 Corinthians 13 (New Living Translation). The blood of Jesus covers completely. The work of the Cross paid the price for whatever I've done or will do. Whatever you have done. Whatever, I would remind you gently, of whatever will be done to you as well.

May each of us, in the New Year of 5772 (or the New Year of 2012 in a few months) let the truth of God's forgiveness become more alive in our hearts. May we offer forgiveness more freely to those around us, conscious of the fact that we each have need of God's forgiveness on a daily basis. And may we stop beating ourselves up for past stupidity! 

And stop allowing others to make us continue to pay for things even God has forgotten.

September 19, 2011 Does God Want Me To Be Happy?

A year or so ago, that is the question a Bible study group addressed: Does God want us to be happy? We were fairly ruthless in our discussion. I shared a few personal situations in which I saw, with 20/20 hindsight, ways in which I had sacrificed righteousness for the "happiness" I longed for loved ones to experience. I had actually encouraged wrong behavior in a few instances, because I so wanted this child, or this relative, to be happy. 

It backfired almost every time. The very happiness I wanted to encourage got lost along the way of bad choices and poor decisions. I doubt anyone remembers my support in those trying times with fondness, or even appreciation. More likely, the individuals concerned think, "I wish someone had just told me to stop, to go another direction. I wish it hadn't been so easy to take that path."

There are, absolutely, more important issues in the universe than me having a smile on my face, or you feeling particularly perky, but...and it is an important but...I believe that God does want us to be happy.

For one thing, joy ranks high on the lists found in the Bible. The fruit of the Spirit: love, JOY, peace... (Galatians 5:22). The kingdom of God is not meat or drink but righteousness, peace, and JOY....(Romans 14:17). 

Christians are so smug about joy at times. "Joy, yes, but that's not the same thing as happiness," you might hear (and want to slap the speaker...in a good Christian manner, of course). "Joy is spiritual. Being happy is all about being human. It's fleshly."

Bleh.

God is the one who wondrously, awesomely created our flesh, remember. And he took the time and trouble and printing space to include some candid remarks about happiness:

• For one year (a man) is to be free to stay at home and bring happiness to the wife he has married (Deuteronomy 24:5)
• To the person who pleases him, God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness (Ecclesiastes 2:26)
• Come and share your master's happiness! (Matthew 25:21)
• May the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful (Psalm 68:3, italics mine)
• A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit (Proverbs 15:13).

Is happiness to be the main goal in life? I think not. "God is love," St. John wrote, not "God is happiness" or even "God is joy." And yet, he is the source of the highest forms of happiness and the highest joys. Surely, we should never see happiness in a negative, less-than-spiritual light.

The greatest argument for God's desire that we be happy is that of his role of Father. What loving father does not want his children to be happy? As Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount:

^{Matthew 7: 9} “Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? ¹⁰ Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? ¹¹ If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! ¹² So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.

Even WE know how to make our kids happy. We are, unless it is taught out of us through neglect and terror, instinctively aware as we become parents ourselves, of our children's need for love, encouragement, training. We delight in taking our children on fun outings, or seeing their eyes glow on Christmas morning. We may not have the means to provide everything our children want, but most of us will bend over backward to bring a smile to our children's faces.

A friend of mine tells me that during a particularly trying time in the life of his family, his wife was not living at home. Taking on the role of both father and mother, he found a creative way to communicate how special his daughter was. If he saw that something was coming on television he thought especially worthwhile, he'd send his little girl to bed early, then wake her up during the night to watch the show with him.

That is cool on so many levels. It made her feel special. It gave them important together time. Maybe it wasn't something the parenting books of the day (or even our day) would have advised, but it worked wonders. When this little girl, now all grown up, thinks back to her happiest memories it is to those days, despite other troublesome factors.

A regular guy knew how to make his daughter happy during what might have been a traumatic, dismal period of her life. Her happiness was paramount to him. Think back to times your parents did something special for you just so that you would be happy.

I am hesitant to withhold that facet of being a parent from the best Father of all. He wants me to grow, to learn, to be holy...absolutely. But he also wants me to be happy. And he has the best ideas of all, about what that will require.

September 3, 2011 A Challenge to Look Within

There was an interesting letter to the editor this morning in the St. Lucie Tribune. The writer begins:

For the 11 years I have lived in Florida the editorial page has been filled with letters from atheists and religious believers. It has taken me a lifetime to come to the conclusion that I'm an atheist. I also feel that I'm a good Christian. One may ask how is this possible? I do not believe in an anthropomorphic god, but I have lived by the teachings of Christ. I also believe in the Ten Commandments and believe that Christ was perhaps the greatest teacher who ever lived.

The writer goes on to point out evidence of the good life he has lived under the influence of Christ's teachings: he works with a charitable organization. He ministers to the poor. He closes his letter this way:

I realize that I open myself to a great deal of criticism, however, when you criticize me you will be criticizing one who lives his life based on the teachings of Christ.

Readers have already left a hefty collection of comments. My favorite was the one that says you can't obey the Ten Commandments without faith in God. That's hilarious! You can't obey them WITH faith in God. That's why Jesus came! NO ONE could obey God's perfect Law because none of us is perfect. Not the writer of the comment. Not the guy who wrote the letter to the editor. Not you. Not I. And if you don't believe me, believe these verses:

Romans 3:23  For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God 

Proverbs 20:9  Who can say, "I have kept my heart pure; I am clean and without sin"? 

Romans 3:10 As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one.

Other letters cheer the writer on for being an atheist or that he is more an agnostic. One rebuttal maintains that no one cares what he believes.

Jesus Christ cares. I'm sure of that.

There is a temptation to take up an offense for the Church, but dare we argue with a man who lives his life based on the teachings the Church cherishes? He opened up a dialogue by writing a public letter, welcoming, in effect, response. Opinion is opinion. One person has just as much right to express his than the next. I doubt that anything that was written online, or anything that might appear in the future in print, or anything I might say here, will change his mind, but there is a legitimate reason to try, however awkwardly some might try, however ruffled a few feathers may appear. But I would advise restraint, nevertheless, at least until a healthy amount of soul-searching and thought has gone on.

Mahatma Gandhi, the great leader and philosopher who inspired the masses of India to work for independence from Great Britain through civil disobedience, said to a church leader: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

We've already established, with the brief passages above, that this last is true. None of us is righteous; therefore we are unlike Christ, who holy and righteous. But perhaps Gandhi was not referring to our inability to fully obey God so much as our inability to fully love those around us.

The writer in the newspaper may well have been put off by the hypocrisy he sees in the Church, by the intolerance and lack of mercy, by the chasm between what Christians often say we believe and our actions. Perhaps there are personal reasons why he can't make “the leap of faith” as he calls it, to accept the death and resurrection of Jesus. One cannot possibly know the many people and events that have colored his thinking.

Dare we judge him, then? I think not. In Mark 9:40, Jesus said that whoever is not against us (i.e. Jesus and his followers) is for us. I'm taking the verse out of context, obviously, but the words are valid. Those who have not yet concluded that Jesus is Lord are not the enemy – especially those who, like the man who wrote the letter, are seekers of the truth. He is trying, as best he can, it sounds like, to live a good life, a productive life, a life of compassion. Why would anyone want to dismiss his efforts, or challenge him?

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that those who seek, will find. Instead of trying to convince this person that he is wrong, perhaps our time is better spent looking at our own hearts. If I say that I DO believe in God, that I DO follow Christ – not because he was a good teacher, but because he is God-in-the-flesh and therefore worthy of all obedience and worship – perhaps I need to ask myself if my life is reflecting it as well as this guy. Saying he doesn't believe, he apparently bears the fruit of belief in his life.

I say that I do. Is my fruit as evident? In some areas, I can honestly answer “yes.” In others? Not so much.

August 15, 2011 What Do You Want?

When the grandkids whine...I mean mention...within my son-in-law's hearing, about wanting something, whether another cookie or a new xbox game, he generally answers one of two ways: “I want to win the lottery” or “I want a million dollars.” In Randy-speak, this translates to: Everyone wants something. Get over it. Be thankful for what you have. Stop whining.

Want. Need. Sometimes these things are different, sometimes they are the same. As physical beings, we have basic needs: food, air, shelter. We aren't just bodies or mammals, however. We are made in God's image, tripartite body, soul, and spirit. Our souls and spirits may be starving, even as they are housed within a healthy shell. Christians often fall into the trap of only taking care of the spiritual, while neglecting the physical, or the spiritual vs. the soul, but all three are from God and therefore all three deserve attention.

Our spiritual need is obvious. We need God. We need him to increase in our lives, while we decrease. God must have preeminence or he ceases to be, for us anyway, truly God. If we have established God is God and we are not, he will be committed to the remainder of our spiritual development. We don't really have to worry about that! His lessons will come, sometimes painfully, in order to complete our faith.

Soul-wise, though, what do you really want? Psalm 37:4 instructs us to “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” This says to me that God is interested in what we want, so we should be too.

Let's be brutally honest for a minute about what we want. Is it fame? Fortune? Better friends? Any friends? Do we want a degree, some letters after our name, a title in front of it?

Proverbs 19:22 can be translated this way: What a man desires is unfailing love. I'm with Solomon on this one. Keep the cash. Forgo the fame. I want to drink love from a bottomless well, to slurp it up and have it run down by cheeks and stain my clothes. I want to jump into love, and I want to be that bottomless well for someone else.

I want to be loved – and not just to know that I am, to feel it. People feel loved in different ways; I'm well aware of what it takes to feel loved by another person. Someone once told me that it is a deep need within each heart to be pursued and desired by the object of one's pursuit and desire, and I agree. I want that in my life, and I want my children and grandchildren (eventually) to experience it in theirs.

 

Love and being in love are not necessarily the same things, and no, St. Paul and others didn't write a lot about that kind of love in the Bible, but that doesn't mean that it isn't legitimate. Being in love with someone who is in love with you is a gift, and it is what I want...not only for myself, but for everyone I cherish. It's one of the coolest things in the world to see my daughter and her husband interract playfully, easily, having fun, being best friends as well as committed marriage partners, knowing that their example will set a high standard for their son in terms of relationships.

 

God is love, John wrote in his first letter. Grammatically, this would mean that love is God – not accurate, however. But if God is all about love, then all of the loves he has provided for us have their places. The Greeks had separate words for them: eros, philia, agape, storge. Passion, friendship, unconditional, familial. English fails us in this regard - we love pizza, children, dogs, and our spouses with the same four letters.

 

If I had to choose only one kind of love....but I don't. I don't have to give up a girlfriend's deep affection for that of my soulmate. I don't have substitute the joy of holding a grandchild for devotion to God, or vice versa. The fact that all four kinds of love exist in a world God created for our enjoyment tells me that he has a plan for each.

 

Where love is concerned, I want it all.  And I don't think that's asking too much.