Love

Hello again. I am forgoing the hiatus I mentioned once again. Yesterday I was inspired to try something new, a series.

This was partially inspired by a blog a friend of mine wrote back in March. Whilst he really didn’t expound upon things, I thought it would be interesting to break love up into five categories, and look at the components of each category. If you haven’t already guessed, my base text will be 1 Corinthians 13. While many of us have read this many a time (if you haven’t you can go to www.biblegateway.comand check it out), I don’t think a lot of us have actually seriously considered the qualities of love described in this chapter. That is my aim, that is my goal, to attempt to reason through those qualities. I want to compare them to the life of Christ first and foremost (i.e. see how Christ exemplified these characteristics in his own life), see how other Biblical characters acted out these characteristics of love, and lastly an application for our lives.

I plan on starting this series in about a week or so, but just wanted to give everybody a heads up of what was coming. I plan on doing this over five weeks, with 2-5 installments coming each week. Now whether anybody actually reads these is a different story, but I was intrigued by the idea, and decided to proceed further. So here are the five categories in which I will place things:

• Love is…
• Love does not…
• Love is not…
• Love always…
• Love (in general)…

So there you have it. I hope you check in to read these. I don’t know how this will turn out, but I’m looking forward to it!!

The Beauty of it All

I know, I know, I was going to take a hiatus, but I couldn’t resist this one. This last weekend I was up in Hillsboro, Oregon. I went to a Poison concert amongst other things at the Oregon State Fair. Sunday came, and it was time for me to leave. It was around 6:30 PM. The day was dreary, wet, and soggy. As I was driving through Gresham, I noticed a rainbow, a double rainbow at that. Yes rainbows are beautiful, and very complex physically at that. A network of billions upon billions of raindrops together, each crafted so magnificently by our creator, to have a different critical angle, that upon total internal reflection, a different wavelength of light escapes the raindrop, creating what we see. That is it in a very very small nutshell. But as i was driving, and looking at the majesty of such a display of God’s handiwork, I began to think beyond the normal, into the supernatural almost.

As I write this I recall the story of King Belshazzar in the Old Testament, the book of Daniel to be exact. This story recounts the infamous writing on the wall. It is found in Daniel chapter 5, here is a brief excerpt:

“In the same hour the fingers of a man’s hand appeared and wrote opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.”

Now whilst the handwriting on the wall was of impending doom, I still relate it to what I saw with the rainbow that day. I think of this story, and the rainbow, and can’t help to think, that the rainbow is the writing of God on the sky, placed there for us to see. Unlike the story in Daniel, the rainbow is a writing of hope, of promise. As I started thinking about this in the car, my ears started tearing up, and I was just overwhelmed with the Spirit. To think that after thousands of years, the words of God are written on the sky for all to see! Yes, yes, I know we have the Bible, the Word of God, but so many times I think we box ourselves in, and limit the Bible to the only means of communication God has with his children. While that is one avenue, it isn’t the only. If we take the time to look around, I’m positive we will find the words of God written in many many more places. Take the rainbow for example, after thousands of years, it still says:

““And as for Me, behold, I establish My covenant with you and with your descendants^[b] after you,  and with every living creature that is with you: the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you, of all that go out of the ark, every beast of the earth.  Thus I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”
And God said: “This is the sign of the covenant which I make between Me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations:  I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the covenant between Me and the earth.  It shall be, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the rainbow shall be seen in the cloud;  and I will remember My covenant which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  And God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

There they are, the words of God, in visible form. God wants us to hear Him. Take the time to look, to listen, and learn.