More than a Feeling

            A Bible study leader of a group I was in as a teenager once asked the group to define love. We all took a stab at it, but I don’t think any of us could get a real handle on a definition that was complete in any way. Just about every resource you look to for a definition of love describes it as a feeling of some kind… usually intense in nature. Feelings are certainly relevant in any understanding of love, but a big question is “But where does the feeling come from?” What is love’s genesis in us? Why and how does it start? Why did I come to love Joanne instead of any number of other potential women in my college? Isn’t love much more than just feelings of attraction or infatuation?

            We can never truly and fully understand love if we leave God out of the picture or the conversation attempting to define it. An article in The Wall Street Journal (2/14/13) tried to explain that real love doesn't come from God; instead, love is just a bunch of chemical reactions in your brain. According to the article “How Neuroscience Can Help Us Find True Love”, Leil Lowndes says:

      “Valentine's Day is here so get ready to send and receive heart-shaped chocolates and cards decorated with big red hearts. But wait a minute! Not so fast. Neuroscience has discovered that the heart has very little to do with romance. For accuracy you should send your main squeeze a Valentine's Day card with the image of a squishy gray blob evocative of a rotting cauliflower—the brain—because that's where romance really resides. And instead of saying "I love you," the knowledgeable lover would say, "Darling, dopamine floods my caudate nucleus" every time I look at you. Love and attraction are all tangled in the convoluted wiring of the brain.

      So what is love? Neuroscience tells us that love is a condition involving neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, receptors, and circuits in your brain. Cognitive science defines passionate love as an "elevated activity in the brain pathways which cause feelings of euphoria, strong motivation, and heightened energy which can induce sleeplessness, loss of appetite, and obsessive thinking about the beloved.”

            Can the human mind describe and explain what love is and how it works? Not in human terms alone. Not if love is from God. It is impossible for a human being to fully experience/comprehend love apart from God. I think that love is part of what it means to be in the image of God. The Scriptures tell us that love comes from God. Love has its genesis in the Lord. Therefore our experience of love is a result of God’s grace to us. God, who is love takes that which is a part of His very nature and shares it with us and graces us with the ability to love. What a mystery this is!

            I don’t know of anything that has ever topped the Holy Spirit’s words through Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 when it comes to describing love: “ ⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”  What a delight to be the object of love. But what an even greater delight to be able to give such a thing to another person! Love is learned. We learn it from God and from our families and from others. Take God out of the picture and take love out of a family and you have a recipe for loveless people, living only for themselves, incapable of thinking or caring for others: incapable of love. You and I have the capacity - and the calling from God – to teach (by word and by demonstration) how to love. And that is something that is “caught”, not intellectualized or scientificated (I know that’s not a word, but I like it.) May the Lord raise up a love in us that reflects His own, and may we have true joy in it.

1 John 4:7-11 (NIV) ⁷  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹  This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. ¹⁰  This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹  Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Ephesians 3:17-19 (NIV) ¹⁷  so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, ¹⁸  may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, ¹⁹  and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

2 Thessalonians 3:5 (NLT)  May the Lord lead your hearts into a full understanding and expression of the love of God and the patient endurance that comes from Christ.

Matthew 22:37-40 (NLT) ³⁷  Jesus replied, “‘You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ ³⁸  This is the first and greatest commandment. ³⁹  A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ ⁴⁰  The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”

PRAYER:  Father, though I may not fully understand the length and breadth and height and depth of your love, I have experienced your love throughout my entire life, and it was never more fully expressed than when Jesus died for me. The deeper I go to search out your love, the deeper I go into its wonders.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Jesus Christ is Lord!    

Scott

Adjusting My Day to the Lord's Schedule

            A couple of days ago I was driving on Cottage Street. This is not always a good idea in the middle of the summer in Bar Harbor. And it is definitely not a good idea if you are in any kind of hurry. I was behind a couple of cars that were just crawling along. It looked to me like the lead car was looking for a parking space and had stopped to wait on someone to vacate a space. I recognized a moment later that I was mistaken. As I pulled out to pass them I realized they had stopped to let some pedestrians - whom I had not seen - cross the street. I felt quite embarrassed about my haste and impatience. There was no near miss or anything seriously dangerous that happened, but I know that things can happen quickly, so I was thankful for God’s grace in the situation. I didn’t get any grace from the driver I passed, though. No doubt I deserved the words she sent my way.

            The whole situation was another reminder (I seem to need many such reminders) that not being in a hurry is a good thing. It seems to me that more bad things happen in life when we’re in a hurry than when we are in a relaxed “slow mode”. Most spiritual blessings do not come into our lives when we are in a hurry for them. I don’t think God likes to be “on the clock” of our schedules and demands, as if we could snap our fingers at Him and say, “I want it now!” and have Him deliver. How presumptuous of us if we ever treat Him this way! And yet we struggle often with the Scriptural truth and guidance directing us to wait on the Lord. Which is best: to adjust my schedule and reference of time to the Lord… or to expect the Lord to adjust to my schedule and my reference of time?

            Here’s a good prayer to start your day: “Father, what do you have planned for me this day, and how may I serve Your purposes between now and when I lay my head down to sleep again? Give me grace to adjust my day to Your plans, to wait on You, and rejoice in what the day brings forth. Teach me to wait on You today. Amen.”

            At this moment in time I am waiting for my first grandchild to be born. I am at an age when I am not old enough to retire, but old enough to think about it. There’s a sense of waiting about that. I am waiting for a few weeks of vacation. These and other matters in my life I must constantly place in the Lord’s hands and say, “In Your time, Lord.” I like the way Fanny Crosby put it in her hymn, “All the Way My Savior Leads Me”. This prolific hymn writer is known for having lost her sight at six weeks of age because of an improper medical treatment. As an adult one day she received an answer from the Lord to a prayer expressing a desperate need for five dollars. Such basic and simple things in life were common matters of prayer for her. When that need was met in a way she could not have planned on, she said, “I have no way of accounting for this, except to believe that God put it into the heart of this good man to bring the money. My first thought was that it was so wonderful the way the Lord leads me, I immediately wrote the poem and Dr. Lowry set it to music.” The hymn was published in 1875, when she was 55 years old:

“All the way my Savior leads me, what have I to ask beside? Can I doubt His tender mercy, who through life has been my Guide? Heavenly peace, divinest comfort, here by faith in Him to dwell! For I know what’er befall me, Jesus doeth all things well.

      All the way my Savior leads me, cheers each winding path I tread, gives me grace for every trial, feeds me with the living bread. Though my weary steps may falter, and my soul athirst may be, gushing from the Rock before me, lo! a spring of joy I see.

      All the way my Savior leads me; Oh, the fullness of His love! Perfect rest to me is promised in my Father’s house above. When my spirit, clothed immortal, wings its flight to realms of day, this my song through endless ages: Jesus led me all the way.”

            Everything Jesus does… He does well. And everything Jesus does is always worth waiting for. When we wait on Him, we are never disappointed. Amen.

Psalm 27:13-14 (KJV) ¹³  I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. ¹⁴  Wait on the LORD: be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the LORD.

Psalm 130:5-7 (NIV) ⁵  I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope. ⁶  My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. ⁷  O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.

Isaiah 8:17 (NIV)  I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in him.

PRAYER:  Father, give me grace to adjust my schedule today to your voice and your way. I surrender my schedule to yours and look for the goodness of your plan.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Jesus Christ is Lord!    

Scott

Consider the Taste Bud

            When I was in Kindergarten, one day I was called and taken up to the 5^th grade classroom. I was not aware at the time, but I had been chosen to help with an “experiment”. The teacher set four unidentified strips of what looked to me like paper in front of me and asked me to taste them – one at a time. Evidently the experiment had to do with the different tastes. I remember the 5^th graders laughing at my (facial) reactions to the strips. It was the same response that I myself had recently when I watched a YouTube video of babies’ first reactions to tasting a piece of lemon. It was quite funny.

            Consider the taste bud. Taste buds are onion-shaped structures on the tongue and elsewhere in the mouth. In the wonderful design of God, up to 100 taste receptor cells are arranged in each taste bud. On average the human tongue has between 2000 and 8000 taste buds. From these a series of nerve connections carry the taste messages to the brain. Five basic taste qualities (five elements of taste perception) are now recognized by scientists and by eaters: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami (a Japanese term for a savory sensation). As these elements work, they combine to assist us to identify flavors. While the old saying – “There is no accounting for taste” – may be about more than what just taste buds do, it is also true in the physical realm. Taste, like beauty, is in the eye (or the tongue) of the beholder. What one person enjoys, the next person may gag at the idea of eating. All human beings vary regarding what foods they like… or love… or hate. When I was young I disliked the taste of many foods that now I enjoy a great deal. Just the “idea” of a certain food can convince us that we do not like it. But when we take our mother’s advice – even decades after she first said it – and tried “it” we realized we liked it, and felt bad for missing out on it all those years. “How do you know you don’t like it,” she asked, “if you’ve never tried it?”

            Salty and sour detection is needed to control salt and acid balance in our bodies. Bitter detection warns of foods containing poisons. The sweet taste receptors provide a guide to calorie-rich foods. Our sense of taste has a simple goal: helping the human being decide whether to swallow or spit it out. It's an extremely important decision, but it can be made based on a just a few taste qualities. A 2004 scientific taste study by Jane Bradbury reminds us that the ability to taste food is a life-and-death matter. Failure to recognize food with a high enough caloric content could mean a slow death from malnutrition. Failure to detect a poison could result in near-instant expiration.

            The psalmist applies the metaphor of taste to both the Word of God and to God Himself, suggesting that if we “taste”, our response will be something like the child having his first lick of ice cream: “It’s gooooood!” How else could we say it? “Yummy”… “Delicious”… “Pleasing to the palate”… “Amazing!” And it is likely that, once we’ve tasted, our next word will be “More!...” The deep and profound goodness of the Lord will always draw us to want more as we benefit from it… as it blesses us with joy and happiness. We want more: a deeper walk, the filling of the Holy Spirit, the cleansing of our sin, the fruit of the Spirit, power to proclaim Christ. And God always obliges the hungry soul. He is generous and “fills our cups” to overflowing. May you find Him to be one who does above and beyond all that you ask or imagine today.

Psalm 34:8 (NIV)  Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

Psalm 119:103 (NIV)  How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!

Matthew 5:6 (NIV)  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

PRAYER:  Father, may I live as Jesus indicated,... not by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God, and may it be pure joy.  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.”

Jesus Christ is Lord!    

Scott