Part II

[it has no expectations]

Do the unexpected by not expecting anything “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

I work at a restaurant and today I found myself counting my dollars between tables, trying to get out as soon as possible while getting a good profit out of people. Most days are like this.

Some days though, I decide to forget about how much I make and instead try to serve the people who come in because they matter. Instead of trying to get away with doing as little side-work as possible, I see what help my co-workers need and do my best to meet their needs. Instead of complaining when people do a less than adequate job (and in a restaurant you are forced to depend on each-other), I look for opportunities to speak words of encouragement to the people around me. I’ll let you guess which days I feel better at the end of.

What is  getting money from work, what is getting “credit” and even knowledge from school, what is riding the bus, what is eating dinner, what is any of that good for in the end? What does it all add up to? What is life without love?

“The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.” Gal. 5:6

And what we are trying to do is make our lives and ourselves matter without love. Maybe we have a love of pleasure and a love of comfort, but no love of God and no love of people. So the things we do, even if we think are for love, are often really because we expect something in return.

            And the unfortunate thing about people is that they rarely meet our expectations. And when our expectations are not met, we are disappointed. And when we are filled up with disappointment it empties us of gratitude and invites in bitterness. It’s probably better to let go of the entitlement we feel to get something back from loving people. If we cease to (even internally) demand returns from other people, then the action loving  in itself becomes the reward and the appreciation and joy we feel toward other people when they give love to us increases tenfold.

Part I

Part I

[it is not self-seeking]

Let’s take a look at my inability to be real with other people. I play social games. Every interaction is like a ploy to get people to notice me, remember me, be impressed by me. Does this make me a fake?

How are we not be imposters? We are constantly deluding ourselves—deceiving and being deceived—building jungle gyms of justifications, only talking to people we know will affirm us...
But if we ask the important "why?" question, we might find the desire to be affirmed is there for a reason. But can we ever feel affirmed enough from people? Even if we do, does it mean anything? Somehow to me, the affirmation I seek from people does not hold much weight when I receive it. It blows away; it is not stable--not like real glory or fulfillment.

Last year when my friend Joshua Sutton left us, he passed on this quote of his read at his funeral:

“It is really easy to wish that you were somebody else…

…even if they are wishing the same thing about you.”

It’s a funny thing about people. Most of the time we are scared to expose ourselves around others, afraid of what they think of us. What I often fail to realize is that most people aren’t thinking of me the majority of the time because they, like me, are too busy thinking of themselves and what I am thinking of them. There are very few people who actually are thinking about you while you are talking to them.

And these are the people we don’t need to be afraid of, because chances are, if they are unselfish enough to find out who you are, they are unselfish enough to care.

I find myself in a weird anomaly of pride and insecurity. It’s my selfishness that keeps me stuck on only thinking of myself when I’m talking to other people; it’s my insecurity that feels the need to. Pride and insecurity are manifest in the examples of social upward and downward comparison. It seems as if we are perpetually either upward comparing (measuring ourselves up to other people and finding ourselves wanting) or downward comparing (picking out what is wrong with other people so we can feel like we are better than they are).

What would it take to cut all that out and be bold in our love with people? Can we find our security of who we are from something more stable than other people so that we disregard ourselves when we are talking to (and about) them? Can we stop trying to impress them and look to be impressed by them instead?

When I cease my search for someone to say there is no one like you I can instead look for how this is true of my neighbor, and ways to let them know.

love without borders

I am limited. I recognize it more every day. I think it helps to explore the actualization of this because then I can live more fully within my limits. And when possible, I can work on pushing them down. One level at a time.

And I what I want most limitlessly is to love. That sounds kind of corny to me for some reason—perhaps because the culture I live in has trivialized the word and made it mean a lot of different things. What I seek to address is the kind of love that is more than a feeling (though feelings are certainly involved);  “a love fiercer than the love between friends, more gentle than a mother’s when a baby’s at her side; a loyalty that’s deeper than mere sentiment and a music higher than the songs that I can sing” (Rich Mullins). A love that treasures people, knowing they are genuinely important. A love that isn’t afraid to know someone.

I think it starts with understanding that I am limitlessly loved, and from within that reality I can dissolve the walls that stop me from loving proactively rather than passively.