Thoughtful Thursday

Doesn’t that just sound deep? 

I don’t know if I’ll actually be deep, but I’ve been wanting to use that title for a while now!  So now I’ll try to live up to it.

Here are my thoughts:

On Politics
Without getting into a rant, I’d just like to say that being a racist is not the same thing as disagreeing, ideologically, with someone whose skin is a different color than mine.  I’m just saying…

I also loved this woman’s comment: “Americans have profound fears about central government taking power away from individual citizens and those fears are legitimised by the Constitution. They have every right to express them without being smeared as “racists”.”  Janet Daley

On Courtesy and Forgiveness
Kanye West and Joe Wilson evidenced the lack of basic courtesy in our country.  Both committed, in a formal setting, a breach of etiquette that was horrific to anyone watching (whether at that moment or later on YouTube).  And it has been refreshing to see people be appalled at such flagrant discourtesy, instead of excusing their behavior because of their upbringing or whatever.  It has been good to see people held responsible for their actions.

However, that does bring up the idea of forgiveness.  Both men have apologized to the person disrespected by their actions.  Both have been forgiven by those individuals.  Yet neither has been, or probably will ever be, forgiven by many who were not affected, but who are offended on the victim’s behalf.  If the person who was directly affected by the actions and comments have forgiven them, what right do we, who were not really affected, have to continue to hold their behavior against them?  It’s something I’ve been wondering…

On Bearing Fruit
I’ve been doing a bible study of the concept of fruit-bearing, what it really looks like and how it really works.  I’ve discovered some really amazing things as I’ve studied, but while I’ve been wanting to share everything I’m finding (my Word document is currently 31 pages long), I will limit myself to one I was really struck by. 

In John 15, Jesus gives his famous statement: “Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”  Here’s what I wrote (with some editing)…

So fruit-bearing is, at its most basic point, about love.  Not prayers or proselytes or even pursuit of God’s glory.  It is about revealing love.  God’s love.  The love of a Father for his (totally rebellious) children.  The love of a Creator for the creation he has given birth to.  The love of a Holy God who arranged for us to have a Savior so we could come near him again.

And there is no greater way of showing this love, Jesus tells us, than to lay down our lives for our friends.

Interestingly, “to lay down” here means “to place (in a pass. or horizontal posture), or to put, referring to an ‘appointment’ to any form of service.”  

What a word picture.  This word is not active service (me trying to do for God).  It is not prostrate worship (me waiting for God to do).  It is submissive readiness.  I am passive, horizontal, but not prostrate.  I am living in a constant state of readiness (abiding, Jesus called it earlier) and a constant state of communication (walking in the Spirit).  And the result is that I am ready, at a prompting from the Spirit, to act, to serve someone in some way at the exact time He prompts me to do it. 

To lay down my life is to serve?  Simply, yes.  Of course, to “lay down my life” is certainly superlatively illustrated by Jesus on the cross.  But it is more than that, and much, much “less” in our normal way of seeing things. 

To lay down my life is to place it before, offer it to, God for any service he wants from me.  It is me, placing my life in God’s hands, to be spent for others as he sees fit.  Maybe that service is to witness to someone.  Maybe it is simply to offer a kind word, a smile, some money, some time.  Maybe it is letting someone else do something for me.  Jesus served some people by letting them throw him a party (Zaccheus, for example).  It is any appointment to service that God requires.  That is how Jesus loved me (“Father, not my will, but Yours be done”).  And that is how I’m supposed to love others.

So it would seem, then, that “bearing fruit” and “laying down my life” are the same.  Bearing fruit requires me to see others with eyes of love and to live out Jesus’ sacrifice for them, to let Jesus love them with my arms and hands and money and time and possessions and with every single part of me.  There is no greater love than to bear this kind of fruit, to lay down one’s life for a friend.

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