Feb. 16, 2003
Just for Today
2 Kings 5:1-14
I Corinthians 13:1-13
Last Sunday night, I was not a happy camper! I was
mad at just about everyone for one reason or another. I felt frustrated
at my own efforts to complete my to do list, and felt I was still over my head in tasks I
had put off for far too long. I was tired from the hustle and bustle of
so many different details I had attended to, and as I looked at the
projects I needed to get started, I was disheartened. I went to bed
feeling defeated by life.
The next morning I got out of bed begrudgingly, but
I managed to get lunches ready for the kids, drove the high schoolers
in the carpool to school, and arrived back home to start to get ready
for the day. Fortunately, I have been starting each day with a
devotional book, Until Today, and on this morning I read, “How
do you withhold your love? We shut down, shut people out, refuse to
budge from our opinions or demands. We hold people hostage, knowing
that they care about us, because we are angry or upset with
them.” Wow, I felt struck right
through my soul, it did not take an intellectual giant to figure out,
this is exactly how I was behaving! I was upset, but I was not sharing
that with them, I was just holding them up in judgment, growling at
them, and at God about all the problems I was having. I read on, “... when you refuse to share what you are feeling
and how the other person has contributed to those feelings, you are
withholding your love. When you don’t provide the other person
with valuable information that could make your relationship with them
better, you are withholding your love. When you allow the fear of being
hurt, the fear of being rejected, the fear of looking dumb make you act
like you just don’t care, you are withholding your
love.”
Whatever is not an expression of love is an
expression of fear. I felt my heart starting to open up as soon as I
read those words, I felt all the ways I protect myself, and the ways I
withhold my love started to melt away. Later that same day, I read the
words from Corinthians, of love being kind and patient, never jealous
or boastful, proud or rude, love is not selfish or quick tempered. IT
DOES NOT KEEP A RECORD OF WRONGS THAT OTHERS DO! I felt shame for all
the ways I was withholding my love because of the records I was
keeping. Oh, Amber did not do such and such even though I asked her a
thousand times! Susy still hasn’t done such and such, Linda
forgot this thing I needed her to do, three days ago! Oh, and this has
not been done, and this person has let me down, the list was pretty
pathetic, I now realized, and I had fallen into the trap of looking for
all the evidence of why these persons did not deserve my love! So I
resolved right then and there to practice letting go of fear, and start
loving unconditionally! No problem, right?
Well, unfortunately this prescription was harder to
follow than I thought. Have you ever tried being totally devoted to
loving and being loved without being afraid? Like Naaman, I felt I was
looking in all the wrong places. Naaman you see was given very simple
instructions by a simple messenger, the servant girl who waits on
Naaman’s wife. “If your husband
Naaman would go to the prophet in Samaria, he could be cured.” Sounds simple enough, but Naaman makes a huge
production of the trip, bringing fifty pounds of silver, one hundred
fifty pounds of gold, and ten new outfits. Naaman does not go to the
prophet Elisha, but instead goes to the king, and ends up scaring the
kind to death. “That Syrian king
believes I can cure this man of leprosy! Does he think I’m God?
He must be trying to pick a fight with me!” But before this erupts into anything serious, Elisha
sends a messenger to Naaman and give instructions, Go wash in the
Jordan River, then you will be completely cured! Instead of being
grateful, Naaman is outraged at the simplicity of the suggestion. He
was ready to climb the tallest mountain, forge the deepest river,
sacrifice all the wealth he had traveled with. How could it be this
easy? This simple?
Love is that simple, love does not mean coming up
with the most expensive bouquet at the florist, or even the biggest box
of chocolates, although gifts are important. No, love is much simpler
and that much more meaningful through the simple expressions each and
every day. I am reminded of just how important those simple things are,
when I meet with a family for planning a funeral for their loved one.
As I interview them about what they remember most about the person who
has died, they always remember these very intimate and personal ways
they experienced love. Or, it was the way they made a certain
casserole, or how they use to make sure I had lunch for school, or the
way Pop always made sure I had some spending money, or how Mom made my
dresses, so they were just like store bought, the latest style and
color. Grandkids might remember how their grandmother made a certain
pie they liked, or grandpa always called them by a special nickname.
How about you, what is it about those you love that you appreciate? And
have you told them lately just how special they are?
One of my professors in Marriage and Family
counseling suggested that relationships are strengthened by all the
acts of love we give freely to one another. He said when we give from
our hearts, unconditionally, it is like filling up a relationship
banking account, and the deposits are all those little acts of kindness
we can do for one another. If we build up our accounts, then when times
are tough, when we make withdrawals, the relationship will not go
bankrupt. Withdrawals are the opposite of unconditional love, those
times when we are impatient, or lose our tempers, when we are rude and
inconsiderate, when we take one another for granted.
Okay, so far so good, love comes in simple ways,
and it does not have to be hard! But to my great surprise, loving was
not that simple at all. I did find ways of expressing love, but I had a
hard time freeing the gift from any of the expectations I attached to
it. We are right back to Naaman, who had certain expectations about
healing. He did believe that he could be healed, if only he found the
right person who could prescribe to him exactly what was needed for a
cure. What got in his way, at least initially, was thinking who the
person should be, a king, not a prophet, and that the prescription
would be complicated, not as simple as washing in a muddy river. Dr.
Bernie Siegel talks about modern day expectations of patients who have
life threatening illness. He talks about the placebo effect, documented
cases where patients came in to the doctor with a particular illness,
expecting some sort of prescription. The doctor would prescribe a pill,
which contained no medicine, just sugar or some other non-curative
matter, and send the patient on their way. Many times the patient would
get well and testify to the doctor about how well the amazing medicine
had worked. Now, some of us might point and say, look at how gullible
that person was, or doubt if that person was really ill or not. But in
Dr. Siegel’s book he states there is an important lesson in this
research. That is there is a connection between healing and the
person’s attitude. His book, Peace,
Love and Healing, cites a study of
fifty-seven women diagnosed with early breast cancer. After ten years,
their survival statistics showed that 70 percent of the women who had
reacted to cancer with a “fighting spirit” were still
alive, versus 50 percent of those who reacted by denying they had
cancer, versus 25 percent of those who reacted with stoic acceptance,
versus 20 percent who felt hopeless and helpless.
It is clear that our minds and our bodies are well
connected, if they work together, miracles have a chance of being
worked within us and through us. The key is to always give from our
hearts, to embrace the world with a holy love, a love that never fails,
a love that is everlasting, because God is love. In the news we hear of
so many threats to our well being, of gangs and terrorist, of acts of
random violence that take away life in strange and surprising ways. In
the face of such terrible acts, we are called to act with God, to care
for the unlovable, to reach out to the sick and offer healing, yes
there are good reasons to fear, the risk is real, but if we don’t
love, we will act with fear, and we will have missed the mark, we will
have missed the opportunity to change the world. Amen.
