As I wrote earlier Sara and I are reading through The Christ of the Mount by E. Stanley Jones while she gets ready to leave for work in the morning. This book is a classic study through the beatitudes. Writing about the first two beatitudes he wrote:
The end of human life will be either the finished egotist or the perfect lover. The first beatitude is the end of the egotist, the second is the beginning of the lover. It is the nature of love to insinuate itself into the sorrows and sins of others.
Wow! That feels like a slap of a two by four upside the head. I’m not sure we get to perfection on either of those two extremes, but I like his point nonetheless. Living in the love of the Father, will continually call you outside of yourself to love others in the same way you’ve been loved. If we don’t learn to live in the Father’s love, then or lives grow increasingly ego-centered and narcissistic. We may try to make it look loving, but all we do is manipulate people and situations around us to get what we want.
Certainly living to ourselves will produce the egotist, but interestingly enough so will our service of religion. Religion still puts the focus on our selves, even when we’re trying to produce for God. In the end we still become an egotist instead of a lover. I want to learn that lover part more every day and embrace Jesus purpose for my life each day, rather than trying to fulfill my own agenda, no matter how convinced I may be that it comes from him.
Travel the next few weeks will take me to Sacramento this weekend, and then over Memorial Day weekend to the Detroit area in Windsor, Ontario. From there I’m going to make a quick stop in Iowa to help a school district sort through an anti-harassment policy near Des Moines. I’ll be there May 30 and 31. After that it’s Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and then Sara and I hope to take a vacation into the Pacific Northwest… But only, if the Lord wills…
