Island Love
It’s Wednesday and Connie and I are getting ready to watch “Lost.” We like the show, probably for different reasons. I have always had this desire to live on an island. Some of it must come from watching shows like Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligan’s Island when I was a kid. Even today I own Castaway the movie.
In my childhood fantasies on my island you get to answer the whole survivor question: I am able to live without help from others? Am I tough enough, resourceful enough, creative enough to make it? Also, in my imagination, on an island you can just have around you the people that you get along with, you know the people that you like. But who gets to choose? You don’t like all the people that I like and I certainly don’t like all the people that you like! It’s my dream so I have just always assumed that I make the choice. It’s my island!
We try that so much in our lives. We exclude those we don’t like and only include those we do. Along comes Jesus and screws the whole dream up. It sure makes following Jesus harder if I have to love everybody, doesn’t it? Loving people is messy and hard and the only way.
So watch Lost if you like, but don’t live like you are. The found are called to outrageous love.
In my childhood fantasies on my island you get to answer the whole survivor question: I am able to live without help from others? Am I tough enough, resourceful enough, creative enough to make it? Also, in my imagination, on an island you can just have around you the people that you get along with, you know the people that you like. But who gets to choose? You don’t like all the people that I like and I certainly don’t like all the people that you like! It’s my dream so I have just always assumed that I make the choice. It’s my island!
We try that so much in our lives. We exclude those we don’t like and only include those we do. Along comes Jesus and screws the whole dream up. It sure makes following Jesus harder if I have to love everybody, doesn’t it? Loving people is messy and hard and the only way.
So watch Lost if you like, but don’t live like you are. The found are called to outrageous love.
posted by C.M. Coon at Wednesday, January 12, 2005
3 Comments:
dave, i think that sometimes the worst problem is when we think that we are loving and living just like we should be, but in fact we are loving and living for us! Man God is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO patient, and kind and loving and awesome. I was reading Hosea 3 + 4 today and how God loves His prostituted people is so amazing, i can't get my mind around it. He truly has an outrageous love!
We are commanded to love others, even if they are vile and hateful, but does that mean that we have to surround ourselves with them? I hope not. When the time comes to love someone that has been hurtful to me its hard, and for the time being I really don't want to be around them. Did Jesus seek the company of those who hated him? Just wondering. Is it wrong to not want to be around those people?
I got a blog just so I could comment in everyone elses! I don't think I'll actually use mine though, we shall see...I am a livejournal geek, after all. Thanks for the happy birthday call! =) It is funny though, because I've noticed recently that (with the loving people thing) people that I've known for a long time that I have never had a problem loving - it is SO hard for me to love them right now! It's almost like I never really "knew" them before, and when I got to know them, I saw things I simply do not like (which happens when we get to know anyone very well.) It's crazy, because we are called to be in community with each other, and just as we think "oh, I'm doing that good" we start to think "I CANNOT STAND THIS PERSON!" Sure as heck doesn't make it easy. Oh yes, and I did enjoy that you called my fiancé an uncommitted bastard. =)
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