Loving the People

Some days, verses mean different things.  Sometimes they speak to us differently.  Sometimes, it has to do with context.


"Not that I am speaking of being in in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.  I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound.  In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me." 

PHILIPPIANS 4:11-13

Often, the last verse is all that is read.  Everyone who went through AWANA knows "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."  I think the verses before it have just as much meaning, though.  Paul is talking about how God gives us strength for everything, not just the hard times.  He will give us what we need in any and everything, even the good times.

These are a few of my favorite verses, and they have been on my heart today.  Lately, I have been feeling down, and have been on the side of the verses with being low, hungry, and desperately in need of God's love, which I wasn't letting in, though he was offering it as freely as ever.  Today, though, I stand on the other side, the side of abundance and plenty.  I feel like I'm on top of the world.  The strange thing is, nothing happened to change that.  Nothing tangible, nothing I can point right at.

I knew I was lost, and God gave me the strength I needed to get out of the rut.  He helped me through, he helped me to accept his love and forgiveness, and now, I ask for his strength to help me give it all back to him.  He has blessed me so greatly, and now I need to give this abounding goodness to the people around me, I need to love them like God loved me - unconditionally.

None of us deserve God's love, none of us deserve love from anyone.  But we need it to live.  We need God's love, because his love brings his grace and forgiveness.  Its a tough thing, to need something we don't deserve.

I hope these verses speak to you in some way.  This is just what they mean to me today; that God gives us undeserved strength all the time, and he gives it to us out of love.  And with that blessing of strength, we should love the people around us, and show them how wonderful God's love is.  If we could love all of the people in any and every circumstance, just imagine how different of a world this would be!

a little bit about me.

I have a brain.  My left brain works in the morning, and my right one takes the graveyard shift.  It keeps me up at night, turning me to my parmesan goldfish to keep me awake as I quietly type out the thought that interrupted my dreams.  I am the three a.m. snacker.  Food makes me stay awake.  I am the person who stays up because her head won’t shut down.  And I keep myself awake because I can’t let the thoughts pass away and be buried in the cemetery of my mind.  It’s too dark down there, and the chances of it coming back up are the same as a dead man rising from his own grave.  

I live in this constant fear that my ideas will leave me when I need them most.  I am afraid that the most brilliant idea I will ever have will come to me when I don’t have a pen and paper near.  I am what I write.  I write my ideas.  I am afraid of losing my ideas.  I am afraid of losing myself.

I am a skeptic.  And I question everything.  

I am extremely easy to read – my body language could tell you the nature of all my thoughts.  But it won’t tell you my thoughts themselves, because you’d have to ask, and I’d have to answer.  You could ask, if you wished, but I would be sure to lie.  And you will probably know that it is a lie, but you couldn’t get me to tell the truth.

I am bizarre.  I can be something one moment and then another the next.  I am not reliable.  Not constant.  I am a mess.  

But I am a beautiful mess, I think.

I am God’s mess, and He is fixing me more every day.

I have faith in that.