Wednesday, June 14, 2006

How Much Do I Love Him?

I've been saving neat one-liners for much of my adult life. One that I've kept and have never forgotten says, You only love Jesus as much as the one you love the least. There's lots of food for thought in that saying! Put that together with a book I finished reading lately and it opens up a whole kettle of thoughts! The book was titled, A Season Of Grace, written by Bette Nordberg. It's Christian fiction and is one of those stories that I hope to always remember. It's the story of brother & sister twins who are now in their early 40's. Life's circumstances have separated them for over 6 years but they reconnect in the story, which covers the remaining days of the brother's life. See, the sister is a Christian, while her brother is not and has been living the homosexual lifestyle, then gets HIV and is dying of AIDS when they reconnect. The challenge for the sister and her family is to love him just as he is, unconditionally, even though they cannot condone the lifestyle he'd lived. The brother comes to live with them at the sister's insistence and lives out the remainder of his life in the bosom of his family.

It made me stop and think if I could love someone like that as much, that I would welcome them into my home and care for them. I will probably never be faced with such a choice, but there are other such choices that I face regularly. Working in the public, in a factory, I rub shoulders with people with all sorts of values and belief systems. I've known a couple of people who are or were in the homosexual lifestyle. There've been those who are serving time in the county jail and work with us on Huber privileges. There's been at least one sex offender working with us. How am I going to respond to these people? Will I love them unconditionally, with the love of our LORD, or will I turn away from them because of what they've done, how they are living, or because their values & beliefs are so contrary to mine?

In most of my posts, I know I've talked a lot about the place and importance of observing Torah in my walk with the LORD. Did you realize that the commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself" actually originated in the Old Testament, in the Torah? Well, it did! Check your concordance for the exact location. (I'm short on time so am not going to do it for you this time.)
Yeshua told us to love one another as He loved us. That's a tall order! He knows every ugly, despicable thing about me, everything I've ever thought or said or done that was a sin against Him, and STILL He loves me! His mercies are new every morning. His steadfast love never ceases. As He told the woman caught in adultery, "Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more." He took all of my sins on His own body and paid the penalty for me, that I might go free. Knowing that, how can I NOT love my fellow man? We are ALL sinners; there is not one of us who is qualified to throw the first stone at another person. That doesn't mean that we accept and endorse sin, but that we identify people as persons rather than by their particular sin. I don't want to be known as "Cindy the gossip" or "Cindy the lier" or whatever other sins I've committed. I am NOT a plaster saint and I have definitely committed my share of sins, so don't be thinking that I couldn't possibly have anything as awful in my past as some of the people I've mentioned. Not to mention that in the Bible there's no list of sins going from bad to worst; all sin is sin and the wages of any & all sin is death.

So just how much do I love Yeshua? Do I love Him enough to reach out in love to the homosexual I work with? Do I love Him enough to reach out in love to men & women behind prison bars, regardless of the crimes that have put them there? Do I love Him enough to reach out in love to the homeless person lying on the sidewalk who smells and looks disgusting? Do I love Him enough to reach out in love to that angry teen with weird body piercings and a foul mouth? I think you get the idea here. Yeshua said that when we reach out in love to another, as we have done it unto the least of these His brethren, we have done it unto Him. That also goes for people outside our ethnic and cultural background. Do I love Him enough to put my money where my mouth is and help those who are less fortunate than myself, even if they happen to live on the other side of the world? Just how much do I love Him? How much do YOU love Him?

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