Proof Before Platitudes. (Sunday Thoughts Link Up #64)
JOHN 14:9-11
Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. 11 Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves.
I have never been one for the self-help books. The “10 Days to a Better You” and “How to Love Yourself Without Losing Yourself” kinds of books make me feel like someone’s about to rap on my door and try to sell me something. I don’t like being talked at. I don’t like the salesman approach to life. So when I think about how to love God and myself and love other people better, I think about how I would talk to my kids.
- Gentle please. Please use gentle hands and gentle words.
- Deep breaths. Good. Now count to ten. Good. Patience my little people.
- No, it’s perfect just the way it is. Why? Because you made it.
- Say “hello” and “yes, ma’am”. Be polite and listen. Always listen to the end when someone is speaking.
- Dear Jesus, we thank you for this day, these people, this house, and another day tomorrow.
All these things add up to love.
Love is action. I mean, obviously. We know this. Of course we know this. But love can turn into such a platitude, can’t it? It’s big and basic like a loaf of bread or the make of your car. But when I think about the relationship between God and Jesus, action is the only way it makes sense. Jesus told the disciples before the resurrection that He was Himself and also God (or tried to tell them…you know how that goes). Anything Jesus says, God says. Anything God does, Jesus does. They continually love each other, which is why Jesus yells the gut-wrenching cry of the forsaken as He dies, alone, aloft, inanimate. This is the moment the love retreats. Because it had to. It had to for us. This is the most telling example of love in action. In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis writes,
All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that ‘God is love’. But they seem not to notice that the words ‘God is love’ have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons…And that, by the way, is perhaps the most important difference between Christianity and all other religions: that in Christianity God is not a static thing—not even a person—but a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance.
This is what makes the relationship between God and Jesus a dazzling display of affection. It is a dance and we are invited to join. They are continually pulling us into the chorus line, the tango, the fox trot. And it shifts. What is required of us to both show and feel love in changes from moment to moment.
Let love never be a platitude.
Let God and Jesus take your hands and walk you onto the floor. Listen to that music cue up. Feel the rhythm in your pulse and let it lead you to action so that your words take on the weight of reality.
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A big thank you from Jamie on The Mom Gene!
