I was made for loving you...

I don't think I love people enough. Excluding myself, of course there are some people I do love. But in general I don't love people enough... especially those that I claim to be trying to serve.

I like them. I always try to be nice to them. I respect them and am impressed with them often. But love...

I suppose I better clarify what I mean by love, since our use of the word today is so open and means so many different things to different people. I'm not talking surface, romantic, sexual or obsessive-stalking kind of love... though of course there's a certain amount of obsessiveness to any love.

I'm talking about love where you want to know the other person really well, and you let them know you well without pretence, where you want to see existence from their perspective and help them achieve their goals, where you are wanting the best for the other person, where you think about the other as much as you think about yourself.

I can't say I love my students like that... any of my students like that. I like them and happy to do some of that, but for the most part I don't do that kind of love... Sure I pray in general for my students and think about my students in general.

Only last week did I pray individually through students in two of my classes. I wish I could say I did that for all my students, or even some of my students regularly... but I can't.

Sure I think of them in a general sense, and in preparing classes or thinking of other activities or approaches, I think of the 'students'. In and out of school I occasionally think of what would be beneficial for my students, what they would like and enjoy, and what else I could do for them... but it generally as my 'students' as a block of people. Not individuals... not as individual images of God... not as individual persons loved by God... not as how Mother Theresa and her Order saw those they ministered to - as each person being Jesus himself.

I know some might say I'm not being realistic in this line of thinking... but I don't think Christianity is about being realistic.

Christianity and discipleship is about reflecting Jesus - which isn't about realism, but about being God with God where ever you are.

Before people worry that I'm going through another guilt-martyr stage again with this being something else to beat myself up with... I have God's grace and that's all I need. God loves me heaps and there's nothing I need to do more (or even can do more) for God to love me more.

Lord, help me to think of others beyond their groupings, and to love others as you love them, as individuals, each created in your own image, but also each as unique expressions of you.

Life... or something like it

One of my friends wrote in an email recently about his wife and him "...things are normal I guess, you know, work, sleep, eat, etc. Pretty boring you'll probably say, and yeah you're probably right if that's what you may be thinking."

When I first read it, I thought that's not boring, that's how I yearn for my life to be. Having steady rhythms of life makes it easier to have other people involved in your life, as they know when they can intrude and become more part of your life, and not having your life too packed with lots of different things makes it easier for them and you to spend more time together sharing life.

As I meet more people, they usually ask about what I've thought about my move to Shepp from Melbourne last year.

To be honest, one of the reasons I moved was to create a life filled less with running around 'ministry-related' activities, but more of a life of missional rhythms. I haven't succeeded. I've largely recreated my ministry-related-activities-filled life with different expressions.

I think we value activity in this society - it gives the impression things are being achieved. But like so many of the trinkets in our consumeristic society, they generally don't amount to much at all.

Rhythms of life should be encouraged and highly valued... Being God with God with the same people around you over time is something precious and greatly fruitful. Keep it up and know you are serving God well.