Love is Enough

As we start the new year, all of our goals and wishes really surround our desire for more joy and I don't know anyone that does not need more love in their life. 

A friend recently told me of a failed romance that sometimes Love is not enough. He said it as if mimicking something some therapist or wayward counselor had told him. Let's examine that statement.

If Love/God is not enough than that invalidates Jesus love and sacrifice redeeming us. His LOVE is not enough? He loved us first, suffering pain, humiliation, giving up everything in this life for love of God and ultimately love for us. When we let this love in, we are touched on such a deep level we love back. It is the natural response. However, He gave all and loved us first.

Is a mother's love not enough for a child? A healthy and instinctual mother will love a child unto her death. Is a husband's love not enough?  A good one will sacrifice to provide materially, emotionally and every which way and will even sacrifice his own life to protect and defend his wife. What woman would ever leave a man that would do this? Not many.

Jesus commanded us to love God and each other as ourselves. He said

"Greater love hath no man than this, that man lay down his life for his friends". John 15:13  How many are friends like that? 

No it's not that love is not enough, it's that my friend did not really love.  Or he did not love the woman he was in relationship with. As a woman we tend to receive and give back the love a man gives. If it's a counterfeit you give then you usually don't get much back. Oftentimes we give up what we can part with what's easy, its when we are faced with difficult choices, choices were even a compromise seems too difficult, that's when we see what love is or what it is not.

But all is not lost because by realizing that it was not love they were pulled necessarily closer to God/Love and in due time they will be strong enough to love the way God intended them to love either in single vocation or with another person where God wills.

This new year if we strive to get closer to God/Love we will naturally grow to the next level of Love. Love is not without sacrifice but it's fruits are unbridled joy and fulfillment both in relationship and individual accomplishment.

As we strive to be in shape and better our appearance. hopefully we do so to honor God and hopefully our mate or future mate. If we strive for an intellectual/educational/career goal we should strive to do this in the service of God and our fellow human beings. One thing is certain some focuses merit a single life vocation and others the married life. We can love no matter which we are called to but we must be intellectually honest and see where our path has lead us and where we want to go. 

Let us choose each day in 2014 to be more disciplined, so we can have more freedom and so we can ultimately choose to love. May God bless you all in your dreams and aspirations this year of 2014, and know that with God/Love anything is possible. Because God/Love is Enough.

GOD is Gracefully Pro-Choice Making Beautiful Pro-Life Possible

This is an emotional weekend for most pro-life advocates in the bay area. Pro-life what does that mean? Well in the popular culture it means we value the life of the baby in the womb. We value him/her at the moment of conception as a life. Can he/she survive on its own? No. But neither can a baby after it's born. She/he still needs her/his mother/caretaker or they will die, and they are dependent for quite some time.

But I argue pro-life means valuing EVERY life. Planned, unplanned, down sydrome, criminal, Muslim, gay...the list is endless. The moment we say one life can be ended because of xyz we become a Conditional Pro-Life movement. I recently saw Les Miserables..the movie. I had seen the play many years before. As much as we love the moral, we shirk the responsibility of what it means to be a Christian.

When we advocate for a criminal whether it's a Jew in hiding in Nazi Germany or in a small Church where a priest líes to defend a thief, the message is the same. It is not about man's law. It is all about valuing LIFE. It's not about the second amendment and the real roots of why that came to be. It's about why is someone else's life worth less?

We make judgements about whose life is worth less..and when we do that we make God's pinacle creation worthless. We are humans capable of great good and yet evil is present in us. Do we condemn our Creator for giving us that condition and freedom? Every time we judge one being less than another, every time we want to control people so that they don't end a pregnancy or don't go to war or don't have the right to guns, we deny our God given right to choose.

Of course there are and should be laws---but in the end if love/God weighed the most in our individual decisions, we would not be fighting for this or that as much as we do. We would always be PRO-LIFE -- FOR pro-choice, anti-gun, pro-peace, occupy wallstreet, pro-life, NRA, Just War, Free market (the labels never end)advocates. Because in the end we all have LIFE, the gift we as Christians believe God gave us, and that is this what it means to be PRO-LIFE.

God bless us as we struggle to live out what our hearts dictate. God bless us with courage and confidence to love when it is most difficult. God bless ALL life...no matter how it is created, in what stage or the choices we judge it makes.

When we judge human life and all the varied forms...we judge God--and who are we creatures to judge our Creator. HE gave us choice from the very beginning knowing we would make mistakes and yet he deemed that freedom still good. We are not called to judge people even if we have to judge positions and actions. We are called to witness and love.

Let us remember how the angel asked Mary to participate with God. It was not thru force or a threat or thru education...it was thru humble supplication. May we learn from this example.

Yes in the end most of us do not choose LIFE in some moments but that should not dishearten us. We should praise God/Love for being gracefully PRO-CHOICE because that makes the beautiful PRO-LIFE possible.

The Redemptive Nature of Conflict

Most of us disdain conflict, except maybe attorneys. Conflict can take the form of inner conflict, conflict with God, and conflict in relationships. Show me a person who no longer experiences conflict and chances are that someone is dead. Jesus had conflict as well. In and of itself conflict is not bad. Its what we think about conflict and how we choose to deal with it that determines how we grow.

In any situation conflict challenges us. Emotions are stirred with-in us and it gets messy. It makes us look inside and dig deeper into our motivations and our conflicts with those motivations. There are layers upon layers inside of us. Often we first wrestle with another's motivations and their layers to circumvent the more painful and tedious process of examining our own. It requires more of us, and so we often choose not to deal with it. It's easier to rationalize and pull back or give up. The old saying pick your battles is true--conflict can be exhausting.

But conflict is also necessary. It is necessary for intimacy in this life. Think of the conflict that happens when you battle to make time for God or to really open yourself up to God. There is someone else that doesn't want that relationship to grow. Think about the feelings of conflict you may have with God every once in awhile...how do you deal with that? Certainly running away or rationalizing does not foster the intimacy. It is the same with our personal relationships and then some.

I often battle when things seem unjust and people are hurt. Hence, it may not seem like it, but I am afraid of conflict as well. This is especially true in relationships that mean something to me. That first conflict usually decides the fate of the relationship for me.

Peeling back the layers is scary, sometimes we don't want to see things about ourselves and about others and about our relationships. Last time I checked however illusions don't last. The beauty of conflict is that you can begin to be loved for who you really are and you can begin to love others for who they really are. As you both accept who you are, you are then free to choose to change and sacrifice and stretch to help build a closer relationship or decide to part ways if you both decide you can't move forward.

Conflict can be the pathway to realizing that freedom. You will only feel loved and have the freedom to truly love if you have the freedom to change your actions or not. You can choose different actions and still be who you are. Conflict makes you feel alive emotionally by making you aware of two opposing forces. It builds character by allowing you the opportunity to embrace the truth and eventually the opportunity to forgive.

We all have many lessons to learn through conflict. My lesson is to not runaway form it initially or when the heat gets too hot in the kitchen. What's your lesson? Love (God) endures all things and hopes for all things. In the end, conflict may be the divine pathway toward redemption. Certainly Jesus' conflict with the world had Him allow the crucifixion. But it also allowed the resurrection and the beauty of redemption, love and forgiveness. May God help us through the redemptive nature of conflict.