Day 144: Taking the First Steps

"But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?  My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.  And by this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before Him."  1 John 3:17-19

This is where we need to start.

We know what love is, but we don't choose to show it.  Instead, we prefer to comfort ourselves by making up stories and trying to qualify our lack of love as a sign of our true love.  That's not what we are taught, though.  As Christians, we are called to show love to every single person.  We need to take down all of our barriers and start loving those around as God has taught us.

Love starts with action, not with words.  Jesus even said, "If you love me, then keep my commandments."  It all starts with living a life where we show love for others.  If all we do is sit around in front of a computer screen, typing everything about loving and not doing a single thing that we teach, we aren't loving others around us.  That's it, plain and simple.  We have to live what we have learned.

Living a Christian life involves lots of self reflection and self evaluation.  If we do not look at our lives through the lens of love, then we aren't looking at our lives in the purest way.  We have come up with systems of mathematics that require precision: taxing, interest, transactions, rent, and even work.  That's what love does for us.  It shows us everything very precisely.  We might not like how our lives look after we look at them through love, but that is the only way we will be able to change.  Our change, our journey, will only start when we get honest with ourselves (for how could we be honest with anybody else if we can't be honest with ourselves?).

When we find ourselves in a situation where someone in need is talking to us, we shouldn't look for a way out of it.  That's not showing love.  Instead, we should look at the opportunity as the greatest gift for us, for through that opportunity, we can express the love that God has shown us for that person.  We can give both a gift to that person, and, even better, give ourselves the gift of knowing that love, the Kingdom of Heaven, is spreading.  We need to be excited to love and to show our love.  We need for that to be just as exciting as our favorite praise song from church!

Day 016: Value

"It is better to enjoy my fruits than gold and precious stones, and my fruits are better than choice silver." Proverbs 8:19

One of the things I find unsettling is how we as humans have assigned values to certain materials. When it comes to precious stones, some, of course, are rare, but others, not so much.  Diamonds, which are mostly regulated by a select group of people, are distributed so sparsely that they seem to be much more valuable than they actually are.  If the entire supply of diamonds were made available, they'd probably be worth no more than quartz.

Going further, we have many devices today that are made quite cheaply, whose materials only add up to so much value, and, yet, we have to pay fortunes for them.  Look at phones, computers, cars - they are all priced at such a higher value than their raw materials.  But, what gives them their value is their function.  Phones, especially the latest ones, can connect you not only by voice, but also by face and personality.  Computers help us to produce documents, connect to many other individuals in countless ways, both good and bad.  Cars help us get from one place to another.  Also, if we are so inclined, these all can be used to show off some semblance of worth, with the more expensive products raising more eyebrows. But, when one doesn't know how to use these things, or when a pig finds a truffle in the yard, or a dog a diamond, these materials mean absolutely nothing.

For me, the above verse tells me that action is what is needed these days.  We spend our times debating on Facebook and Twitter, making blog posts, writing long essays, compounding pictures, and making our presence known.  However, it is only whenever we go out into the world and act that we can ever get anything done.

The pursuit of wisdom and knowledge are what add value to a person because it requires the person to think and to put all of these things into practice.  Otherwise, they are just like precious stones - stowed away in a box.  All of the greatest knowledge can be stored in books and placed on grand shelves in an extravagant library in the middle of the city, but if their contents are not being applied, they serve nothing more than kindling for a fire.  It is even safe to say that the vast majority of the world's knowledge and wisdom is stored on the internet, but if they are not being accessed or taught or applied, they are nothing more than pages that we want to navigate away from, pop-ups we want to delete, banners we wish to ignore.

So, rather than find a bible to place on our shelves, prayer beads decorate our wrists, rosaries to hang from our rear-view mirrors, icons to adorn shelves, let's live their examples.  Read about these things.  Live the prayers.  Live the faith.