Last Summer was glorious. All 6 of us had just moved into 3 three bedroom house and almost couldn't believe our good fortune! We were finally going to have enough room. The week after we moved in I found out I was pregnant, a month later my sister moved in, a month after that my niece and my parents joined them. With the birth of Charissa we are now a family of 11 ... in a 3 bedroom house.
Through all this I asked God to teach me how to love and serve my family. I still haven't figured it out (and honestly, I'm not really even trying sometimes) but the series we've been going through at church has really challenged me. I guess I had no idea what love is -- at all and I have been doing a very poor job. (I cannot begin to summarize this series, you have to listen to the podcasts yourself.)
Somewhere in the chaos that is my life right now I've realized that the good times will come and go, life will always be harder than I wish it and relationships will always take more effort than I want to give but ...
... to live a life that goes beyond bearable and that is full of the deepest satisfaction and overwhelming joy you must know God because to know God is to love God and to love God is to love others and in doing that -- we are doing what delights and pleases Him and us the most. God tells us that He is love and in order to be more like Him I have to lift up my crippled little heart and let Him fill me with His crazy love.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.” - C. S. Lewis
2 comments:
We are also hearing a series on 1 John! A I am in the same boat with you! What a wonder our God is! And how little we know!
We had that C.S. Lewis quote on the back of our wedding program! A great source of conversations that Joshua and I had over the years. An encouraging post. Thank you!
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