Thursday, September 23, 2010
Adventures in GI-Land
Well, the Goose is set for a little "adventure" on Monday morning... after years of tummy troubles, she will undergo several "intestinal investigations"(the details of which I will spare you, but all sound like LOTS of fun!) Thankfully, we will be at the Children's Hospital & she will be asleep through it all. We welcome any & all prayers for the Goose, her doctors, nurses & hopefully for some answers too.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Simplicity
“Mommy, why do we have to go to church?” The Goose inquires from the back seat, out of the middle of nowhere one afternoon. We were not headed to church, so I am not entirely sure what made her think about this… guess we’ll chalk it up to the Spirit.
“Well,” I replied, “we go to church because God wants us to go & learn about Him.”
Good answer! Good answer! I thought, cheering myself on like the fine folks on Family Feud. Until… the next question comes…
“What else does God want us to do?”
“Well…” I said, wondering how deep the theology of a three-year-old is… “God wants us to be nice… &…” OOOO! I’ve got it! “God wants us to love Him & love our neighbor & everybody else!” Whew! Good one… that should sum things up alright.
“Well what else?”
Now really, I just summed it all up for you, the same way Jesus did for those who asked Him back in the day. What more could you want to know? What more is there to say? I can’t explain every detail of how we love God & love the people around us!
Somehow I managed to convince the Goose that really, all God wants us to do is to love Him & other people, which means we need to be nice to everybody, including our Mommy & Daddy, of course! But this little conversation got me thinking…
Jesus told us to love God & love our neighbor, & that’s great… simple enough. He put it all in one easy-to-read sentence. So why do we make it so complicated? We tack on the “what else are we supposed to do”… like loving Him & others isn’t enough. Aren’t we supposed to warm a certain spot in a certain pew at a certain time every week? (It seems some people might think they are predestined to sit in a pre-selected seat on Sunday mornings) Aren’t we supposed to serve on a committee & volunteer somewhere? Aren’t we supposed to pray? The list goes on and on…. & yes, those are all good things, but aren’t all good things a part of loving God & each other? Did we have to make it all so complicated?
I usually like to blame society, technology, etc. for the complication of faith and Christian values, but… it seems people had the same problem thousands of years ago. Paul tells the Corinthians:
“I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
I guess we’ve been making things too complicated for longer than we realize. And maybe the fault is not external after all… we are the ones muddying the waters… adding pieces to the puzzle… taking short-cuts that turn out to be detours. Sure, Satan leads us & tempts us, but we are the ones following him through the complicated maze when there is a clear, straight path right in front of our face.
“What else does Jesus want us to do?”… the answer really is simple… just a four letter word… LOVE. That’s it. Love Him. Love others. Simple enough? Maybe simple scares us? We can understand a four-letter-word, right? But it’s the doing of that little L-word that makes us nervous. If all we have to do to follow God is to love each other, well… that’s too easy, right? So if we add on all these other requirements for faithful living, then our task as Christians seems a bit more complex… Then we feel like living out our faith is truly an accomplishment on our part… right? (Sounds a bit like what the Pharisees did to the Old Testament Laws… adding on rules & requirements, turning ten simple commands into countless codes attempting to cover every minute detail of life… ) But just to love… where’s the challenge in that? Even a three-year-old can love! BINGO. Even a three-year-old can love… so why can’t we… JUST Love God & Love His People? That’s the beautiful, wonderful, easy-to-comprehend truth of Christ… Just Love… one SIMPLE command. “But what else?”… nothing Goose. God doesn’t ask us to do anything else, just LOVE. And if we can do that one little thing… well, the rest will simply fall into place.
“Well,” I replied, “we go to church because God wants us to go & learn about Him.”
Good answer! Good answer! I thought, cheering myself on like the fine folks on Family Feud. Until… the next question comes…
“What else does God want us to do?”
“Well…” I said, wondering how deep the theology of a three-year-old is… “God wants us to be nice… &…” OOOO! I’ve got it! “God wants us to love Him & love our neighbor & everybody else!” Whew! Good one… that should sum things up alright.
“Well what else?”
Now really, I just summed it all up for you, the same way Jesus did for those who asked Him back in the day. What more could you want to know? What more is there to say? I can’t explain every detail of how we love God & love the people around us!
Somehow I managed to convince the Goose that really, all God wants us to do is to love Him & other people, which means we need to be nice to everybody, including our Mommy & Daddy, of course! But this little conversation got me thinking…
Jesus told us to love God & love our neighbor, & that’s great… simple enough. He put it all in one easy-to-read sentence. So why do we make it so complicated? We tack on the “what else are we supposed to do”… like loving Him & others isn’t enough. Aren’t we supposed to warm a certain spot in a certain pew at a certain time every week? (It seems some people might think they are predestined to sit in a pre-selected seat on Sunday mornings) Aren’t we supposed to serve on a committee & volunteer somewhere? Aren’t we supposed to pray? The list goes on and on…. & yes, those are all good things, but aren’t all good things a part of loving God & each other? Did we have to make it all so complicated?
I usually like to blame society, technology, etc. for the complication of faith and Christian values, but… it seems people had the same problem thousands of years ago. Paul tells the Corinthians:
“I am afraid, lest as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds should be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
I guess we’ve been making things too complicated for longer than we realize. And maybe the fault is not external after all… we are the ones muddying the waters… adding pieces to the puzzle… taking short-cuts that turn out to be detours. Sure, Satan leads us & tempts us, but we are the ones following him through the complicated maze when there is a clear, straight path right in front of our face.
“What else does Jesus want us to do?”… the answer really is simple… just a four letter word… LOVE. That’s it. Love Him. Love others. Simple enough? Maybe simple scares us? We can understand a four-letter-word, right? But it’s the doing of that little L-word that makes us nervous. If all we have to do to follow God is to love each other, well… that’s too easy, right? So if we add on all these other requirements for faithful living, then our task as Christians seems a bit more complex… Then we feel like living out our faith is truly an accomplishment on our part… right? (Sounds a bit like what the Pharisees did to the Old Testament Laws… adding on rules & requirements, turning ten simple commands into countless codes attempting to cover every minute detail of life… ) But just to love… where’s the challenge in that? Even a three-year-old can love! BINGO. Even a three-year-old can love… so why can’t we… JUST Love God & Love His People? That’s the beautiful, wonderful, easy-to-comprehend truth of Christ… Just Love… one SIMPLE command. “But what else?”… nothing Goose. God doesn’t ask us to do anything else, just LOVE. And if we can do that one little thing… well, the rest will simply fall into place.
“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength [and] You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
(Mark 12:30-31)
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