Workin for a livin

Middle daughter is about to get driver’s license.

Middle daughter wants a car.

After parents laugh hysterically they tell her they are broke.

Middle daughter realizes that to make money you must work.

Middle daughter gets a job!

Congrats Kaikin!  She’ll be bagging your groceries at the local store starting soon and savin’ her way to an automobile.  Looking back, I wish I would have gone to a grocery store or restaurant for my first job.  I worked in a quiet clothing store and was pretty much bored to tears every evening.  Those were the days when you really dressed up for work, too, so I’d be standing around in high heels, whistling and changing the clothes on the mannequins every night just to make the time go by.

Love

“Could it really be that simple?”  I thought as I read “The Shack”*.  Jesus had just told the main character that the expectations put on us as believers in this world are not from God – that all we need to do is to love without agenda.  Love.  Just love.  Love God.  Love people.

What a freeing thought!   It bears up to thorough scrutiny, too, aligning with what God’s Word tells us to do and with all that Jesus taught.  To love is to accomplish everything else that God wants from us: bringing others to Him in relationship, helping people in need, maintaining and thriving in relationship to other people, knowing and enjoying closeness with our Creator, having fulfillment and purpose in this life, and more.   God is love.  He’s relational.  Interacting and relating are what He’s all about.  After all, He created people to have relationship with them, to interact, to love them and be loved by them… by us.

Whatever you’re about today, however long your task list, however heavy the load of guilt that you’ve piled upon yourself as you try and be a “good Christian”, let it go and just love.

I am remembering a song my parents taught me as a child

Tell me, Mimi, do you love Jesus?
Oh yes I love Jesus….

Tell me why do you love Jesus?
Because He first loved me.

*The Shack, by William P. Young