Character
It’s Only Real Love When It’s Hard
I possess a doctoral degree in Strategic Leadership, but sometimes I feel like I’m still in Kindergarten when it comes to some areas of life.
One such course of needed study and growth is the biblical quality of love.
Next week my wife, Shirley, and I celebrate forty years of marriage. I would have liked to have taken her on a cruise, a romantic getaway, or even to a nearby Bed ‘n Breakfast.
But yesterday, Shirley had major female surgery (a seven hour procedure), and for the next 6-8 weeks she will be convalescing and I will be her main caregiver at home.
But that’s okay. I know I have a lot to learn about the greatest subject in the world–love.
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
I know I could be writing about a lot of world events today. As I punch the keyboard, Hurricane Matthew is bearing down with ferocity on the US east coast. Two nights ago, Mike Pence proved his worthiness of Donald Trump’s VP pick by easily upping Tim Kaine in the vice presidential debate.
In about thirty days one of the most important presidential elections of our lifetime will take place between Donald Trump–weak on character and good on policies–and Hillary Clinton–who is corrupt in character and disastrous on policies. She would lead the American nation off of a progressive cliff.
But today, I’m thinking about none of those issues because love calls. My wife is resting comfortably at home while still hooked up to some technology. Her seven hour surgery two days ago was longer than the four surgeries that I have experienced before combined.
While I waited anxiously for her in the waiting room, two hours beyond the scheduled time, I thought about our lifetime of love and countless expressions of it. I pondered the privilege of having six great children–ironically the cause of her female surgery. I also had some tearful moments wondering why it was taking so long while pushing the thought from my mind that maybe something was wrong.
I knew she wasn’t having life threatening surgery, but this was the first time in six decades she’d been under anesthetic–and at our age, anything can happen. I was actually a little surprised at how emotional I was throughout the day. Tears came to my eyes when I saw her smiling face a few hours later.
Our love goes deep, and it’s only real love when it’s hard.
What do I mean by that?
Jesus told us that it’s easy to love people when things are familiar and good: “ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? (Matthew 5:46,47).
What’s hard about love is when you are not friends and things are not going well. That applies to two primary situations–loving your enemies and loving sacrificially when times are difficult. Let me focus on the second scenario.
For many years, I’ve defined love this way: Love is doing what’s best for another person from God’s point of view. In difficult circumstances or situations love oftentimes demands great sacrifice and continual death to self to really benefit another. The other person needs you, sometimes desperately. You need to change your schedule, your commitments, your likes and dislikes, and many other self-oriented things.
Right now, that’s what love demands of me in caring for Shirley. For the next week or so I need to carry her through a difficult time–loss of sleep, caring for wounds, dealing with the unpleasantness of restoring bowel movements and cleaning up messes.
For weeks after, I will cook some of the meals, do the grocery shopping, handle the laundry, and care for Shirley’s shut-in parents. For quite a while I need to do all the lifting–even a gallon of milk. Classes must be canceled, appointments postponed.
In the past when I’ve had surgeries or accidents, Shirley was my gracious caregiver and performed it beautifully.
Now it’s my turn to learn true servant-oriented love.
When she came home from the hospital yesterday I needed to make her some dinner. Since moving to a new home three years ago, I’ve never cooked a meal and don’t even known where many of the kitchen utensils reside. I even had trouble turning on the gas stove! Then, I made the only thing that I’m really able to cook–scrambled eggs.
It’ll be a miracle if Shirley nutritionally survives the next month. But I’ve got to rise to it.
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
While I was waiting for Shirley’s surgery to be completed, I read the current number one bestseller in America–Bill O’Reilly’s Killing the Rising Sun. I strongly recommend it. It shares the horrific story of World War II in the Pacific Theater where the United States defeated the militant Japanese Empire. Twenty-four million people died because of Japanese aggression and savagery.
The book is dedicated to all those who served in the military to defeat Japan. It tells numerous stories of heroism and bravery of those who laid their lives down to free the world from tyranny. They did it because they loved liberty and their own nation more than themselves.
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
While I was waiting in surgery, I needed someone to deliver something to me at the hospital. I called a nearby family friend who had just gotten up. He didn’t seem too interested in helping me and kept trying to find a way out of the errand. Eventually, I did it myself.
His response instructed me. You don’t love if your heart isn’t willing to sacrifice. It’s easy to “love” when it costs you nothing. But that’s not true love–just doing what’s convenient.
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
I’ve seen real love demonstrated by my parents. For a number of years, my mother took care of my aging father as he faced various medical problems. Occasionally the roles were reversed. There were numerous ambulance trips to the hospital and the anxious prayers that accompanied them. There were weeks and months of exhausting care.
They both needed to look past the beauty of youth and deal with sagging skin, no privacy, clipping aged toenails, and cleaning up errant bed-pans. This sacrifice usually fell to my mom and she did a superb job of serving my dad until he drew his last breath. I learned much by watching them.
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
I also know that I haven’t come near to experiencing what some people have faced in the “exam” of real love, such as:
- Caring for a dying child who passed away at a young age.
- Dealing with a handicapped relative over a lifetime–putting another’s greater needs ahead of your own.
- Serving in a war zone or caring for the destitute after some terrible natural disaster.
- Enduring sex slavery, being abducted to fight as a child soldier, being raped and abused by evil aggressors–and having the opportunity to help.
Many people in our world daily face terror and difficulty that can only be eased or erased by those who reach out with true love.
Jesus is, of course, our greatest example of true self-sacrificing love. He left the comforts of heaven to walk the dusty streets of earth. He healed the sick and raised the dead, and most didn’t respond favorably to his compassion and concern.
He ultimately laid his life down on a barbaric cross to make atonement for the entire world–and this after they’d spit on him, whipped him and yelled “Crucify him!”
“Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:13).
It’s only real love when it’s hard.
Our 40th anniversary arrives on Monday. Between now and then I will be at home, caring for Shirley and trying to nurse her back to health. When our special day arrives, the only thing on the calendar is a trip to the doctor to have some technology removed. Then we will return home to keep healing, loving, remembering that we made a pledge four decades ago to stand by one another “in sickness and in health.”
It might be easy to feel sorry for ourselves. Wouldn’t our love be greater if accompanied by the blessings of health and excitement or luxury and travel?
No. Absolutely not.
This year we get the privilege of experiencing the true heart of love which is intimate sacrificial caring for another. The fluff will be gone, the dross burned away, and the real deal left to sparkle and shine. This is going to be the most loving anniversary we’ve ever known or experienced.
It’s only true love when it’s hard.
And… very precious to God.
Leaving a Legacy Through Journaling
A wise man named Blythe Harper told me at nineteen that one of the smartest things I could do in my life was to keep a personal spiritual journal or diary.
I started practicing his advice on October 30, 1972. I’ve been doing it ever since–for the past forty-four years.
At the moment, I’m looking down at the yellowed first page of that record when my hand-writing was still young and vibrant, and the thoughts flowed like water!
I’m sure glad I heeded his advice.
You can also leave a legacy through journaling.
To the left of my desk is a shelf that contains more than four feet worth of those journals, painstakingly kept over four decades. The early years were written on college-ruled paper and filed in notebooks; the middle segment were penned into the pages of a Youth With A Mission Prayer Diary; the last ten years have been complied and stored on computer with a paper copy back up.
I’m really glad that I did it. These precious journals contain many things that are irreplaceable to me:
- They share the story of my growth as a young believer to a forty-plus year career missionary with YWAM.
- They contain my thoughts on many subjects, personal, theological, practical, and relational.
- They tell all the stories of my travels, ministry, and spiritual highlights over a lifetime.
- They record the details and records of all the people I’ve met during my life on all the continents of the world and in sixty nations–what a treasure!
- They expose my personal failures and struggles, and how God made a way out of them for me.
- They help me remember the many things that God has taught me and spoken to me over forty plus years of walking with him.
It’s amazing how much you forget in a single day, let alone a year or a lifetime. One of my current practices with the journal is to print it out at the end of every year and then use the month of January to read it through again and remind myself of the things God has showed me and what he’s doing in my life. I’m always amazed at how much I forget–if it weren’t for the discipline of writing.
That’s why they say writing is 20/20 memory.
Yes–I’m like everyone else–not always faithful to record in the journal. When I started out in 1972, I wrote something down everyday. But for years now, I don’t write daily, just regularly to record the highlights of life and keep the thread of continuity going. Sometimes I get way behind and have to catch up on a trip or long flight across the ocean.
But I always catch up and keep the tale building. It’s a tremendous benefit to my own life–even if no one else ever sees it.
One thing I use the journal for is to organize my time wisely–what the Bible calls “numbering our days” (Psalm 90:12). About thirty years ago I prayed about the possible length of my lifetime based on the ages of parents, grandparents and other factors–and settled on eighty-five years. There’s no guarantee, but that’s what I’m aiming for.
Then I decided to “number my days”–literally–and place the number of days that I’ve already lived and the number of days I could possibly live (up to age 85) on each entry page of my journal. The purpose was to remind me that life is short, there’s no time to waste.
Thirty years ago those numbers stood at 10,952 days lived with 20,067 to go. Today those numbers stand at 22,968 days lived, and 7,963 left. Looking at those stats almost daily places a great motivation in my heart and conscience to make my life count for eternity. At this stage in my career, the hands of the clock are turning faster and faster.
But besides the personal benefits of journaling, I figured out a long time ago that recording my journey might be a blessing to my family, my children and grand children, or anybody else who might be interested. Years ago God impressed me that journaling was a great way to leave a legacy to those who come after you–so that they can learn from your mistakes and be inspired by your victories.
That’s a great motivation to keep writing–for the help and encouragement of others–especially those who are your own flesh and blood. (Nobody else may be interested!)
Sometime in the future I’m going to put those journals into a book form that can be passed down to my ancestors. I want them to learn how I survived the death of my mother, the imprisonment of my father, how I found God at fifteen and was called into his service at nineteen. I want them to read of all of God’s miracles in my life and how he carried me through the trials and stressed that we all face. I want them to know that I loved God with all my heart and want them to love him too.
Even if I don’t get around to the book, the journals are there. They’re a permanent record that I’m sure someone will enjoy.
They won’t know much about the real me unless I tell them–and write it down for them to read. The cool thing about today’s world is that it’s pretty easy to put your thoughts in a book form. Computers make that process easy and it doesn’t cost much to self-publish. You can print ten copies for your grandkids or 100,000 if your life is a block-buster. By the time I reach eighty-five in 2038, they’ll probably have figured out a way to take my old written journals, and scan them straight into type!
It gets easier every year.
Journaling is one of the simplest and most long-lasting ways to leave a legacy to your family and friends– one they can hold onto and cherish for the rest of their lives–and pass on to others. As Francis Bacon once said, “Reading makes a full man…writing an exact man.” I want to “fill up” my descendants with the great news of God’s grace in my life–and the only way I can be “exact” about it is to write it down.
It’s that simple.
So how about you? You say you’re older and it’s too late to start journaling? How about doing a “recap” of your life that can be a blessing for generations to come. If you’re closer to mid-stream, why not get started with that wealth of life experience that can be a help to those that follow you.
And if you’re young, this is the time to begin. Take the wise advice I was given over forty years ago:
Keep a personal, spiritual journal.
It’s your legacy to pass on for the glory of God.
Hey Colin–Patriotism is a Fruit of Gratefulness
Just a few years ago, NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick (pronounced Capper-nick) was one of the most known football players in the world–having led the San Franciso 49ers to two NFC championships and one Super Bowl.
His abilities were unique. Strong armed, tall, and could run like a gazelle, Kaepernick had reached the top echelons of America’s favorite sport.
But this week he’s in the national doghouse. Why?
Because Colin doesn’t understand that patriotism–as shown recently at the Olympics by numerous athletes from many countries–is a beautiful fruit of gratefulness.
Here’s what happened.
Kaepernick was found sitting down during the playing of “The Star Spangled Banner” in a recent pre season game while all the other players and coaches stood. The national anthem is sung before most sports contests in America. When asked by a reporter about why he did it, he replied:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”
The National Football League does not make its athletes stand for the national anthem, and, indeed, the 49ers said it was within Kaepernick’s right to not participate. But some coaches say they expect members of their team to stand, regardless of their personal feelings.
Here’s how Rex Ryan, the Buffalo Bills head coach, addressed it in a Sunday news conference:
“Anytime I talk to my team about that, if there’s personal beliefs or whatever that keep you from doing it, I understand. But at the same time, you know, you’ve got to look at the gifts that we have, the opportunity that we have to play a great game is through the men and women that serve our country. I think that’s an opportunity right there just to show respect, and I think that’s why when you see our team, every one of us are on that line and that’s kind of our way of giving thanks.”
Most coaches and athletes agree with Rex, including Colin Kaepernick’s birth mother, Heidi Russo who sent out the following tweet following his action:
“There’s ways to make change [without] disrespecting [and] bringing shame to the very country [and] family who afforded you so many blessings.The path less traveled doesn’t need to be one of destruction.”
Russo and many others believe that Kaepernick should be grateful for his nation. He was born in a country where he could be adopted into a white family who cared for him. He was allowed to go to university where he became a star under a series of coaches.
Because of America’s freedom, Kaepernick made it into pro football where he currently has a $114 million six-year contract with the 49ers that makes him the 14th highest-paid NFL player. That puts him in the top 0.8 percent of the millionaire’s club that is professional football. Kaepernick’s income also places him in the top 0.05 percent of Americans. He has much for which to be grateful.
Steve Berman puts it this way:
“Colin Kaepernick is an American. He enjoys the civil rights offered to all Americans, to speak his mind. He enjoys the economic freedom offered to all Americans, to earn a lot of money. He enjoys the social status available to all Americans who work hard to achieve success. He enjoys using his God-given talents and abilities to entertain millions of us while playing a game while others make 1/10,000th of his salary for sleeping in a container truck in Afghanistan.”
“If Kaepernick really believes that the best use of his massive fame is to disrespect his own nation because social injustice exists, and some people are raised without the racial harmony he experienced, he has that right.”
“But maybe, instead of playing the “God Damn America” card, it would be more productive if he could take his $114 million and use it to help some of those who would appreciate his help.”
“In the end, this is America. It’s a free country. And Colin Kaepernick is free to be an idiot.”
Former US Representative Colonel Allen West, himself a black man, was far more upset.
West said a Scripture verse comes to mind: “Wisdom for Mr. Kaepernick: Proverbs 17:28, ‘Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent, and discerning if they hold their tongues’ Or as the old folks down South would say, ‘Best for a stupid person to keep their mouth shut and not open it and let everyone know they are'”.
He says to Kaepernick: “You sir, may certainly have the right to sit on your ‘fourth point of contact’ when the National Anthem is played, but never forget, you live in a nation that has provided you the privilege to have that right.”
West concluded with these words: “The American flag has a very touching meaning for those of us whom it will drape our coffin—as it did for my dad…and it will be for me. May you seek God’s forgiveness and find humility because we the people are not going to forget what you did and said.”
So, why did world famous athlete Colin Kaepernick do what he did? Here are a few possibilities:
1. Maybe he has believed the lie of the Black Lives Matter folks that massive racial injustice still exists in the United States. That is a palpable untruth. Injustice will always exist in pockets in free nations and in deluges in much of the world. America is not racially perfect, but is better today than anytime in its history despite the demagoguery of the present Administration to try to gin up the black vote.
2. Maybe he has become a communist sympathizer. Following his latest game, Kaepernick came to the podium wearing a T-shirt that lauded Malcolm X shaking hands with Fidel Castro in the 1960s. That at least fits. Communists hate what the free world stands for.
3. Maybe he’s on his way to becoming a Muslim. It’s not totally far-fetched. He has a Muslim girlfriend. Some close to him feel he has turned away from his Christian faith and embraced Islam. He recently sent Ramadan greetings out on his social media accounts. Islam is virulently anti-American, as exemplified by the rhetoric and behavior of the Nation of Islam.
4. Maybe he’s just bitter that he’s about to lose his job with the 49ers and may be looking for another team. Change is difficult, even when you’re making eleven millions dollars a year.
5. Maybe he’s just immature and needs to grow up. We all do in some areas of our lives.
There are two famous black men that Colin Kaepernick should learn from. One is Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave who played a critical role in the abolitionist movement in the mid-19th century. He had been a frequent critic of American policy. However, he believed that the dearly held principles of the Declaration of Independence, and its unequivocal statement that all men are “created equal,” would eventually lead to slavery’s dissolution.
Douglass pulled no punches in criticizing slavery as a massive contradiction in American life, but he understood the evils of the system would be corrected by embracing the country’s origins rather than rejecting them. He encouraged black Americans to sign up and fight for the Union under the American flag during the Civil War, played a crucial role in recruitment efforts, and convinced many former slaves to serve in the military and embrace the United States as the vessel—not the thwarter—of freedom.
Douglass was known to frequently play “The Star-Spangled Banner” on his violin for his grandchildren in the years after the war. He said in an 1871 speech at Arlington National Cemetery that “if the star-spangled banner floats only over free American citizens in every quarter of the land, and our country has before it a long and glorious career of justice, liberty, and civilization, we are indebted to the unselfish devotion of the noble army.”
The other person Colin Kaepernick should follow is Ray Charles.
When I first heard about Kaepernick’s national impiety, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh’s radio program in my car. Rush said in that broadcast that he had one response to Kaepernick’s bad judgment.
Then he played, for four minutes, Ray Charles’ moving rendition of America the Beautiful. Here is a link to a 2001 version, sung just following 9-11. Please watch it to the end. It will give you goosebumps.
Douglas and Charles and millions of other Americans have it right. Patriotism is the fruit of a thankful heart toward God, your heritage, and for those who laid down their lives for your freedom.
Hey Colin–Patriotism is a fruit of gratefulness. Get your head out of your butt, stand to your feet, put your hand on your heart and sing!
We will gratefully join you.
“who more than self their country loved.”