intermission

Amidst all these nerve-wracking contemplations, I am working on a sermon for Sunday. I am preaching again at my friend Kyle’s church (the congregation invited me back). I feel as if I am a cheap choice, for I do not have it altogether. How can I preach a sermon when going through such spiritual turmoil? Yet I know that God is strong in my weakness, and that it is His pleasure to use me this Sunday. So I am working on the sermon, a sermon about what it means to love others. This is a big topic for me. It’s easy to say, “Let’s love others, just love other people, God wants us to love our fellow man,” and even to tattoo hearts on our arms and wear shirts with hearts on them and to memorize all the verses in the Bible about loving other people. But how often do we actually think about what it means to love another person? I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and I think that to love someone in the biblical sense is to offer yourself as a sacrifice for that person, and I will support this conviction with scripture. If we want to know how well we are loving other people, the question ought to be, “How much am I sacrificing for other people?” I believe, therein, lies the answer. At the same time, it is strange: if I pick up my friend and drive them to work every day, but am not losing anything in the process—if I truly enjoy it—then is it biblical love? If there is no sacrifice—for without loss there is no sacrifice—then is it love? Sure, it may mean that we enjoy their company and find fellowship with them, but without sacrifice… I don’t know, just questions that are raging through my mind.