Ensign: I love you even wehn yore meen.

All ye inhabitants of the world, and dwellers on the earth, see ye, when he lifteth up an ensign on the mountains; and when he bloweth a trumpet, hear ye. Isaiah 18:3


AN ENSIGN ON THE MOUNTAINS 5 July 2013

That's what Sarah said in her birthday card for Jeffrey this past Sunday. (Well, our son actually turned six on Tuesday, but we held his party at our house early Sunday evening because that's when we could get the most family together.) Anyone here who's raised or raises siblings, was or is a sibling, knows they can get on each others' nerves. Do I hear an AMEN?

In case you haven't sounded out today's title, Sarah was writing in the card for Jeffrey, “I love you even when you're mean.” And Sunday, as I recall, he was particularly mean to her, breaking off one of her doll's heads and kicking her in response to her slapping him as well in a typical brother-sister fight. Unless there's blood (none so far) I usually don't get involved other than to call on them to stop.

 

 

Then go back to a school assignment Sarah had in mid-April when Sarah had to write about her family. Excerpt with my daughter's spelling intact: “Jeffrey is my favrit person in the hole wide woild I love hem.” What a person does to us, what the people closest to us do to us, should not alter how we treat them. SHOULD NOT, but often does, bound as we are by time and grudges.

I kind of feel sorry for the people who get one-story mentions in the Bible – there's no way we can know this side of heaven if the rich young ruler from last week's message (Matthew 19:16-30) ever came back to follow Jesus or did so in spite of his possessions, or if Euodia and Syntyche from the church at Philippi (Philippians 4:2) ever mended their fences, or if Alexander ...

Anyway, it's not so important that we know what happened two thousand years ago as much as it's important that we live, despite the very obvious changes in our world over the last two millennia, loving others as we love ourselves is still the most paramount and still the most hard thing to do. That's the sin God did NOT hard-wire into us. We have a sin, a separate from God, nature of our being, yes.

 

But it's your choice, my choice, everyone's choice to choose not to love others, no matter what they do. In the introduction to Jesus' story of the good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37; to get how jarring this story was in first-century Judaea, think today of this story as “the good 'N-word'”), the lawyer tells Jesus he reads the law as loving God with all he is AND loving his neighbor as he loves himself – and then his definition of “neighbor” gets so expanded that, for a while at least, he can't handle it.

 

I want to love people even when they're mean to me. That “love your neighbor as yourself” is not conditional on how they are, who they are, or how they have been toward you, no matter how much you feel you don't deserve the treatment you've gotten. (A great many times I do.) I've got a BIG lesson to learn from my kids in that regard – no matter how much they batter each other, they're still each others' best friends. But God's spoken bigger things through children.

 

And without loving God, I can't love anyone else.   

David


P.S. I write this weekly devotional to keep in touch with all of you in my address book, and I hope to be an encourager too! If you find that I’m not or you want me to get lost, just let me know, thank you!


We praise You, Lord, for this beautiful day You have given us! Please pray with me for the peace of Jerusalem on both sides of the fence and for physical and spiritual communities around our world.


Lord, we need Your strength to fight the natural disasters and human ills to ultimately treat the cause and not just the symptoms; until we who have power change, this world You have made us stewards of won’t either.


Thank You, Lord, for all those in leadership and service here and abroad. Thank You for the opportunities we have been given as well as the promise of new life through Your Son. And may we all seek and have a blessed week! Amen.