Calling

I went to God and asked - 'What's my calling?'
'Ok, that one's simple,' He said,  'It's to emulate me; it's to die loving'. 

Love

"Perfect love is a kind of self-dereliction, a wandering out of ourselves; it is a kind of voluntary death, wherein the lover dies to himself, and all his own interest, not thinking of them, nor caring for them any more, and minding nothing but how he may please and gratify the party whom he loves; thus , he is quite undone, unless he meets with reciprocal affection; he neglects himself and the other hath no regard to him; but if he be beloved, he is revived, as it were and liveth in the soul and care of the person whom he loves; and now he begins to mind his own concernments, not so much because they are his, as because the beloved is pleased to own an interest in them: he becomes dear unto himself, because he is so unto the other. " 

- Henry Scougal in 'The Life of God in the Soul of Man'

'To love is to not compare... '
                                    - Mark Noll

Crutch

A perfect man would never act from a sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people) like a crutch which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it is idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc.) can do the journey on their own.

- C. S. Lewis 

The Judsons

Time for a short story.

The Judsons were crazy. Like really crazy. When Adoniram asked for Ann's hand in marriage he wrote to her father:

"I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean, to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death. Can you consent to all this, for the sake of him who left is heavenly home, and died for her and for you; for the sake of perishing, immortal souls; for the sake of Zion, and the glory of God? Can you consent to all this, in hope of soon meeting your daughter in the world of glory, with the crown of righteous, brightened with the acclamations of praise which shall redound to her Savior from the lost* saved, through her means, from eternal woe and despair?"

He got married to Ann on Feb 5, 1812. He set assail with her to India on Feb 19, 1812. Ann bore Judson 3 children, all of whom died. When her second child died she wrote:

Our hearts were bound up with this child; we felt he was our earthly all, our only source of innocent recreation in this foreign* land. But God saw it was necessary to remind us of our error, and to strip us of our only little all. O, may it not be vain that he has done it. May we so improve it that he will stay his hand and say 'It is enough.'

* Words changed to make more contextual sense. The word 'heathen' used is really not meant derogatorily. It is meant to imply people who do not share the same faith, but it is not used without love. People who do not love the heathen do not end up sacrificing their, theirs spouse's and their children's lives for them.

The story was picked from here

Random Thought

If you are weak, then you may not be loved. But if you are strong, you do not know what it means to be weak and still loved. 

Jerusha

So here's the deal Jerusha,

If you die by contracting the same disease that killed the person you nursed, then you love him. It does not matter then, if you just liked him, or if you liked-him-liked him.

Hey... I think it's cute.


Thank you for loving him.

"Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth."

Advice to Christians: Love - Francis Schaeffer

"As we turn to consider in more detail how we may speak to people of the twentieth century, we must realise first of all that we cannot apply mechanical rules. We, of all people, should realise this, for as Christians we believe that personality really does exist and is important. We can lay down some general principles, but there can be no automatic application. If we are truly personal, as created by God, then each individual will differ from everyone else. Therefore each person must be dealt with as anindividual, not as a case or statistic or machine. If we could work withthese people, we cannot apply things we have learnt..." "...mechanically. We must look to the Lord in prayer, and to the work of the Holy Spirit, for theeffective use of these things."

"Furthermore, we must remember that the person to whom we are talking, however far from the Christian faith he may be, is an image-bearer of God. He has great value, and our communication to him must be in genuine love. Love is not an easy thing; it is not just an emotional urge, but an attempt to move over and sit in the other person's place and see how his problems look to him. Love is a genuine concern for the individual. As Jesus Christ reminds us, we are to love that individual 'as ourselves'. This is the place to begin. Therefore, to be engaged in personal 'witness' as a duty or because our Christian circle exerts a social pressure on us, is to miss the whole point. The reason we do it is that the person before us is an image-bearer of God, and he is an individual who is unique in this world. This kind of communication is not cheap. To understand and speak to sincere but utterly confused twentieth-century people is costly. It is tiring; it will open you to temptations and pressures. Genuine love, in the last analysis, means a willingness to be entirely exposed to the person to whom we are talking."

- Francis Schaeffer, thanks to Stephen Williams 

Loves too little

He loves Thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for Thy sake.

                                                                                         - Augustine of Hippo

Random Thought

I can't love people because they are lovable. I can love them because God loved me when I was not close to being lovable. 

Thoughts on Love - C. S. Lewis

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket — safe, dark, motionless, airless — it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.I believe that the most lawless and inordinate loves are less contrary to God’s will than a self-invited and self-protective lovelessness…We shall draw nearer to God, not by trying to avoid the sufferings inherent in all loves, but by accepting them and offering them to Him; throwing away all defensive armour. If our hearts need to be broken, and if He chooses this as a way in which they should break, so be it. What I know about love and believe about love and giving ones heart began in this

- C. S. Lewis