More Thoughts on Love

Ok so a few thoughts on love the past few weeks. I guess it is still smouldering under my skin that despite the expressions of love in our society I don’t see it actually working, I hear it more than see it. Then I look at my own life and realize that I also still have a long way to go learning this. The Hebrews 13:1 verse that said ‘Let brotherly love continue’ is still churning away trying to work its way out in the real world. It is a great thing to say we have love and it is awesome to know that God loves us. I mean Jesus came to save us over this whole love thing. Then a few verses later in this Hebrews chapter it talks about marriage and the marriage bed... which then took me to how I am to love my wife... Ephesians says I am to be love my wife as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it.

But the challenge is I am not God and neither are you so somehow it is a big challenge for us to really love. Me love my wife as Christ loved as God himself loved and therefore gave—HIMSELF. Wow do I stand a chance of that kind of love. Those of you that know Ruth know she is lovable, that is not the problem, the problem is me, I’m not always very loving, I have my own agenda. So God to make this love thing really clear says that a man is to love his wife as if it is his own body. And I reply back to God, ‘Hey I’m just not that good.’ And you know if you look into your own heart you aren’t either. We all struggle with love that deep, that honest, that transparent. To know we should do and to actually get it done are two different things.

Then earlier in the actual words of Jesus we read that the two great commandments are 1. To love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls and minds. And 2. To love our neighbour as our self. I don’t know about you but I have to believe that Jesus just didn’t know some of the neighbours I’ve had over the years. Some were pretty bad.

So I realize very quickly the ability to love like I am supposed to is just not as good as it needs to be and I jump to 1 John where the wee verse reminds me that “God is love.” While I do know and understand that God is so much more than love he is still love. Jesus was/is love incarnate (stop me and ask me if that word needs defining). Wow, so the key to loving and continuing in brotherly love is then to know God, not to do it on my own but to really know God and then let his love flow into and through me to others. And hopefully many others will join this journey...

I will share a story from a friend of mine that had to really learn this...

Stay tuned,

Jon

Scars are Not the End of Our World

Life often brings scars. Scars come from a variety of places and all hurt to some level. In our physical  bodies we carry these scars, both the ones from accidents to the ones that were intended, accidents range from paper cuts that heal overnight to major, requiring great amounts of time and care to get healed. The intended ones are the kinds we make ourselves for a variety of reasons like getting a tattoo or an ear pierced to the knife of a surgeon. Some scars are so small that no one sees them and others disfigure us for the world to behold. Some we get used to. Some we think stand out yet no one even sees them but us.

Sometimes the scars are the emotional baggage that haunt our waking hours and our nightmares. Some are seemingly so slight that our friends can’t figure why we don’t just let go. Others we deal with in ways that those who know us wonder how we can possibly make it. The sayings are that ‘time heals all wounds’ and ‘you will get over it in time’. We also say ‘sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me’. These are all true but all lies as well. Time may well ease the pain but often the scars will not go away completely.

One scar is the scar of guilt we bear, both for things we do and things done to us that we take the blame for. And day after day, month after month, year after year the pain is there, the healing doesn't seem to catch up. But somehow we have to find a way to get past that guilt. Picture it if you will as a gift box wrapped in a silver paper, with a lovely bow... day after day we look at it and wonder what it is. We open the box and wallow in that guilt or grief and then wrap it up and put it back on the shelf and keep looking at it and the pain just doesn't go away. So we open it over and over to check if the pain is still there-- 5 times, 10 times, a hundred times we face that pain of the guilt and the more we see it we realize the paper is more torn, the bow less shaped the box is getting battered. And then one day we find that we don’t need to look at the box or unwrap it and we can finally take it out and put it in the bin with all the other rubbish.

I think this is part of what Jesus meant when he said, “take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest unto your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.” We don’t use a yoke very much these days but two oxen or horses yoked together makes the load easier to pull. And that is what Jesus knew, and what he taught in his own suffering as he cried out from the cross: ‘Father forgive them...’ So we learn from him and eventually something we think is of value yet leaves us in pain we can toss out and finally move on. We may not forget that box but we can put it someplace it doesn't hurt us quite as easily anymore.

Just thinking,

Rev. Jon Bergen

Making a Difference

Well the days are getting markedly longer and longer, a nice change of pace for the next few weeks before we start fussing about the nights drawing in again. But I can tell I am getting more culturally acclimated in that I find myself fussing about the coolness of the days like everyone else.  Yet I also see that the fields are shaping up with the rape blossoms now fading quickly, the tops of the barley growing into heads and the fields growing so very quickly.

I guess  with the funeral for Steve last week the reminder of how quickly life passes by came by my heart one more time. Then we received news Sunday morning just past that Ruth’s uncle of 59 in Houston Texas had passed away unexpectedly as well. I have talked to some that are in their later years and they so often mention how quickly their lives have flown by and how quickly the days come and go. 

The reminder to make my life count seem to fly into my heart and head—the sense that I don’t want to waste what is left of my life. Suddenly in that contemplation I start to think of guys who lived short lives that made big differences in the world around them. I think of an almost local boy from Edinburgh who by his ministry is a name more linked to Dundee, a young man by the name of Robert Murray M’Cheyne who lived only to the age of 29 yet one of the greatest of Christian revivals surrounded his ministry in those short years at St. Peter’s Free Church. I have read a couple of the biographies of his life and am often convicted by what I read to do more than what I actually do.

Another man that was more than a mere man, yet died at about 33 was Jesus Christ. His life though short has literally changed the world for almost 2000 year. But more importantly he is still changing folks lives today. 

While I know that I will not change the world the way Jesus did, nor will I change Brechin and Scotland like M’Cheyne did, I do hope that I can change a few lives by sharing what Jesus did and that as some come with me on this journey of life that we then don’t waste our short lives and instead can be a blessing to our world. As I was reminded last week, I must’ let brotherly love continue’ and it is a lesson hard to learn some days, but it will make a difference in the long term.

Praying I learn before it is too late,

Rev. Jon Bergen