Archive for the ‘Love’ Category:
My Little Man
There is a little man who has captured my heart. He has blue eyes and blond hair and little peachy cheeks. He looks up to me and likes to hold my hand. Last night, we watched Toy Story and played on his drum-set while singing, “Little Bunny Fou-Fou.”
He is two-and-a-half years old.
He is my baby brother.
Last night, we shared snack time. He climbed up into his little chair and wanted two Go-Gurts. “One for you and one for me!” he said.
I look at this little man and I love him. We have the same father, and we have the same blood. We are bonded together forever in that way, because we have the same family. We are also bonded by the bonds of love. I understand this best when we spend time together, singing songs and sharing snacks.
So it is with the family of God. By Jesus’ blood, we believers are bonded together and share the same Father. We have the same blood forever. However, we don’t fully understand this joy until we spend time together as brothers and sisters enjoying this special bond and sharing our love for each other and for our Father—sometimes this involves singing songs and also sharing snacks! (Colossians 3:16, Psalm 34:8, Mark 14:21-23)
Abiding in the Father
One doctrine I was not familiar with growing up in a church was the reality of adoption, or sonship. This is the reality that when one becomes a Christian, he or she becomes a son or daughter of God. God becomes our father, our daddy. As Christians, we are his children.
J.I. Packer, in his book Knowing God, explains it this way,
“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his Father.
The Treasure of You
“Now I know that you’ll always be where I go.” –Plus One, Forever
A bartender at the restaurant where I work said to me this week, “Jen, if you could make out with ANY guy in the WHOLE world, who’d it be?” I just looked at him and started cracking up.
I couldn’t even make eye contact.
So, I ran away in the name of tending to my guests, came back, stared at him and said, “You know, you make me think about stuff!” While scratching my head I honestly confessed, “Well, if you must have an answer, I’ll say to you, my future husband.”
And silence filled the space between us.
Sometimes I wish that Chuck Norris were my dad…
…that anytime a boy wanted to take me out, he would have to come face to face with fear itself. I was reading my Chuck Norris Facts this week and I learned that Chuck Norris doesn’t need to breathe because air hides in his lungs for protection. When I think about “guarding my heart,” a mountainous task that intimidates and frightens me, I wish I could summon the big guys, call for backup, and just all around break out some Chuck Norris on the guys that come showing up red on the radar of my heart.
Fortunately, even though I cannot call on Chuck Norris as my personal “heart-guard,” I have learned over time that I am not left alone to fend for myself in these tender matters. That is great comfort to me as I grow in love.
Yet still I ponder: what does it mean to “guard your heart”? Anytime I even THINK about dating or even think about just talking to a guy, people constantly remind me to “guard my heart.” But what exactly does that mean?
Stargazers and white lilies…
…with red accent roses, were the flowers in my sister’s wedding bouquet. 
When I consider the depth of meaning of my sister’s wedding bouquet and the way I feel when I gaze upon a simple rose, I am blown away by the thought of God’s glory. The same occurs when I take in the stars and all that they shout at me as I feel so small and insignificant when compared to the night-time sky.
What’s Glory Got To Do With It?
Long before I believed in any kind of a God, I would ask Christians why God supposedly created us, and why we should believe in him. I (predictably) got what I thought was a cop-out answer: “to glorify himself,” or “for his glory,” etc. I always wondered why such a “loving” God would create humanity, and then watch us spiral into chaos, all to glorify himself. It sounds really selfish, doesn’t it? Since I have become a Christian, I have avoided that answer as much as possible.
Now, I do believe that God loves us and seeks to glorify himself, but I do not see the two quite so juxtaposed as I once did. I haven’t really been able to figure out why, but I think that the last week or so in my life has illuminated my understanding.
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A Basis For Community
In my last post I discussed the human need for relationship. I argued that we are relational beings because God has always been relation as a Trinitarian God (meaning God is one being with three persons). I also proposed that the New Testament shows how the early church was a picture of solid community, but that the church in North America is not. This discussion has lead to another important question: Upon what is community based?
Community cannot be based purely on our mutual need for each other. This reduces community to a symbiotic relationship instead of seeing it as a beautiful living out of the way we are designed. Community based on need could then be likened to a commercial exchange. “I need help in this area, you need help in that area, so I guess we can help each other.” But community is far more involved than this. There is not only a willing component, but a desirous one. “I want to help you, you want to help me.” Community must be based on more than the fact that we need community.
