We’re All Going to Die!

I have had three sentences sitting in this draft post for a couple days now.  I sit down to write and realize I have nothing particularly new or brilliant to say.  I am still newly divorced.  I am still on an emotional roller coaster.  My ex-wife’s weekends without the kids, and her unwillingness to have any kind of conversation about what she is doing with her time still bother me.

I had a good conversation yesterday morning at Bible study.  One of the men, after listening to me talk about what it was like, suggested I needed to cut it off.  I had to explain my thinking in terms of showing love to my ex-wife and showing my children a godly response to her.  Testifying to these things encouraged me.  Denying my own selfish sense of justice is the right way.  Yes, I know that we need boundaries, and that day will come, but it will come at a time when I am more stable.  This same gentleman compared the divorce to a slow, almost certainly terminal, illness.  I got a whole different perspective from this little insight.

Think about it.  We are all terminal.   What is a healthy way to act towards someone we know is going to die?  And if we ourselves are terminal, how should our lives look?

The Four Loves

I am currently reading C. S. Lewis’ book The Four Loves.  Three years ago my counselor asked me to read it.  I bought the book and read it in a day or two.  I learned nothing.  Now, with my wife divorcing me, I figure I should read it again, and for understanding.  I know I am messed up in my affections.  I have known this for a while.  I know that my future relationship with my wife depends on me developing a healthy understanding of how to love her.  I know that any future relationship, Lord willing, is dependent on me having a healthy understanding of these loves.

Are any of my affections properly balanced?    Sin affects them all.  As I read, I recognize excesses and insufficiencies in every area.  I wish I could say, “I have a healthy relationship over here.” but I am not so sure.  I know that some of this comes from condemnation.  It is all a continuum from sin to perfection.  Sin is always right there, while perfection seems so far away.  I know this is not right either.  I know that the Spirit lives in me, and that perfection is just as close as sin.

I try to look at Jesus and figure out how he expressed Love.   His love cannot be nicely divided into four categories.  His expressions of love sometimes astonished and sometimes offended those around him not because they were out of whack, but because they were perfect.  Oh to be like Him.