Loving the Way Jesus Loves

For a long time I've been persuaded that the combination of home, family, wifeliness and motherhood is the best school for learning to live a godly life.  So when I first read about this book I suspected it would offer me needed lessons in that very school.  (Not that I want to humble myself before the whole WWW world, but I am sometimes astounded at how un-loving I am, especially with those I love best.)

I should have known that I was in for a convicting, bumpy ride.  Here is some indication--and I've only gotten as far as Chapter 3--"Love is not irritable."

Most of us tend to think of irritability as a natural response to life's little frustrations. . . . We should take our irritability much more seriously, because it is the very opposite of love.  We know this because 1 Corinthians 13:5 says that love "is not irritable."  Irritability is the antithesis of charity.  It is not merely a way of complaining, therefore, but actually a way of hating.

Ryken writes of the disciples' irritability with the five thousand who came to listen to Jesus teach all day and then had the audacity to become hungry.  He contrasts their attitude with that of their Teacher:

Notice the way Jesus loves.  His love is drawn to people in need.  Rather than pushing them away, as the disciples did, Jesus brought them close . . . This is what love does:  it lets the needs of others set our agenda, rather than letting our agenda limit how much we are willing to serve. . . .

When people come to us with problems that are beyond us--asking questions we do not know how to answer, or requesting something we do not have, or expecting us to do something we do not have the strength to do ["Mamaaaaaa!!! . . . Honeyyyyyy!!!!"]--it is easy to get irritated with them for approaching us.  But love takes what it has on hand, lifts its eyes up to heaven, and asks God to make our lives a blessing to people in ways that go far beyond what we are able to give.

If I stopped to think, I would realize my worst irritation rises from the thought "It's never enough, is it?  I never do enough.  There's always another meal, another load of laundry, or some fault found with the service I've just rendered."  These are the inner flash point words that ratchet up my irritability.  I've always dismissed that attitude as just "a natural response."  (And then maybe I've flung the dishtowel in the sink and stomped away.)

Now I see that I need to plead for grace to give me a "supernatural" response.

Love is not irritable.

Which End of the Telescope?

The prophet Isaiah describes the sweeping magnitude of Jehovah's saving work in the Messiah:

"It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."  Isaiah 49:6

I have an impoverished mind when it comes to figuring out my God.  The salvation I imagine is always "too light," too small.

I desire--and pray for--deliverance from stress, from mindless work, from disappointment; but God often says "it is too light a thing," and then He brings about weightier salvations:  strength to my bones and soul; spirit-grown patience, love, and forgiveness.  His plan is not accomplished in small, compensating handouts, but in an incomprehensible work bearing the prints of infinite Hands and part of a great glorifying salvation to the ends of the earth.