What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees. Hypocrites! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore the more important aspects of the law—justice, mercy, and faith. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things. [Matthew 23:23 (NLT)]
Many years ago, we had a teen-aged foster daughter. Along with a smoking habit, she brought along plenty of emotional baggage. Choosing our battles carefully, we decided that an outright prohibition on smoking would not top our list. Instead, we made the rule that she couldn’t smoke in our presence or in our house. One night, after walking outside for a cigarette, she immediately returned. She explained that while she knew smoking outside was allowed, she also understood it was something we didn’t want her to do. Wanting to please us, she returned to the house and decided to quit. Hallelujah! She’d seen the difference between obeying the letter of the law and living the spirit of it. She recognized that rules aren’t necessarily made to keep something from us, but are made to get something better for us. She’d come to experience the joy that comes from pleasing the ones who love her.
If simply following the letter of the law was enough to guarantee a place in heaven, the scribes and Pharisees had a guaranteed spot. They followed over 600 laws governing diet, fabric, attire, tithing and bathing. Following those rules, however, wasn’t nearly enough for salvation. Jesus criticized them for missing the whole point behind God’s laws. While following the letter of the law, they ignored the spirit behind God’s laws: love, generosity, fairness, compassion, and commitment.
The New Testament has only two laws but, even then, it’s not easy to obey the simple directions to love God and to love others as ourselves. Once we have the saving grace of faith, however, obedience becomes much easier. Our foster daughter’s obedience came not from fear of punishment, but from her trust in and growing love for us. Like her, when we have faith in God, our obedience comes from love instead of fear. With faith, we want to please God; without it, we want to please ourselves. With faith, we know that God’s laws were given in love and we want to live within them. If we love and trust God, we will live to obey and please Him. Only then will we come to know the joy that comes from living in His light.
Real estate ads can be somewhat misleading. “Needs TLC” usually means structural damage; a “handy-man special” requires rehabbing and money; “waterfront” probably has a basement that floods; “cozy” means really small and “intimate” is even smaller than cozy. “Tear-down,” however, means just that; while the property may have value, the house isn’t worth renovating. In our southwest Florida community, it is not unusual to see advertisements for homes with an asking price in the seven digit territory (none of which need TLC, handymen, have flooded basements, are cozy or intimate.) Since it’s difficult to believe there’s anything needing improvement in such expensive houses, the shocker is that some of those homes are listed as tear-downs. That hefty asking price is for the privilege of tearing down the existing structure and spending several millions more to build another one in its place.
Like many, I mistook the phrase, “just deserts” for “just desserts.” The phrase comes from a now obsolete meaning of the word “desert” which was something deserved or merited. However we spell or say it, we tend to take a certain amount of pleasure when our enemies, adversaries, and those people who manage to make our lives difficult or downright miserable get what they deserve. “Poetic justice,” we say while watching them reap the consequences of their actions. Bad attitudes, excess drama, inappropriate behavior, substandard performance, selfishness, pettiness, laziness and insubordination all have a way of catching up with people. It’s hard to have any sympathy for them when they end up in a world of hurt of their own making. Jesus doesn’t tell us we have to be sympathetic but He does say we have to love and pray for them! We don’t have to allow their poison to seep into our lives, make excuses for them, enable them, tolerate horrible behavior, or become embroiled in their drama, but we do have to love and pray!
Warm summer nights at the lake mean campfires, s’mores and fireflies. As the darkness descends, bug jars appear and the children start chasing these fascinating insects. How odd that the same child who will shirk away from any insect during the day will give chase to and capture these flashing winged beetles at night. By the end of the evening, the children have collected a jarful of tiny flying stars (that will be released as soon as the little ones are tucked into bed).
When my children were younger, there were several occasions that I wanted to pretend I had no idea to whom they belonged! There was that time one noticed (and used) the red emergency stop button on an escalator, or another discovered the meaning of the “domino effect” after pulling over one stanchion at the airport and seeing another ten follow suit, or one managed to be so nasty to the babysitter that she went home in tears, or when hotel security came knocking because of spitballs dropping from the window of our children’s adjoining hotel room. I really didn’t want to admit I knew them, let alone had given birth to them. We expected better from our children and their conduct certainly didn’t bring honor to our name. Unfortunately, their behavior, while unacceptable, was a somewhat unavoidable and unpleasant part of their growing up. Fortunately, those times of boundary testing are long over and I am now proud that they bear my name.
Devotions of the Heart 