Husband, love your wife!

Husbands are told in Ephesians 5:25 to love their wives. Love, to be love, does not demand recompense or recognition, but gives by nature. Love that does not give of itself is not love. We give in love because we have received in love. All of us has received a love that is above all others. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever will believe in him would not be lost, but have eternal life.” When we recognize the greatness of the love we have received from God, we will be able to love others out of the overflow of the immensity of it. If we have never believed, we have never received, and our lives will be spent seeking in the wrong places a depth of love that only God can give. As husbands, we are meant to be lovers. And to be lovers, we must be givers, not takers.

Seeing is Believing

“Seeing is believing,” says the old adage. Another adage counsels us to “Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.” Missouri claims to be the “Show Me” state. The disciple Thomas said, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.” In a world where lying and deception abound, it is wise to be cautious. God gave us our five senses so that we can detect what is good and real, or a cheap imitation.

Thomas eventually saw and believed, and Jesus gave Thomas an admonition intended for all of us, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29) Peter, who was the first disciple to believe and confess that Jesus was the Christ, wrote, “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.” (1 Peter 1:8)

There are things that require us to believe without seeing. Our five senses are good for discerning material things, but spiritual things require a sixth sense, called faith. Faith is the ability to see into the spiritual realm. It is “…the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) It grows stronger through exercise. We start out by believing the message that Jesus died on the cross for our sins, and it grows by believing that, “He ever lives to intercede for us.” (Hebrews 5:25) When Jesus walked on earth, he could be seen, heard and touched, but now that he is in heaven, we must see him through eyes of faith, there at the right hand of God, praying for us, loving us through the Father, comforting and strengthening us through the Holy Spirit who is always with us.

Lord, open the eyes of our hearts, so that we can see you praying for us continually, loving us and not accusing us, and living in us to empower us to love others as you love us.

My Sense of Wonder

What a wonderful thing electricity is. Our lives would not be the same without it. It lights our homes, heats them and cools them and keeps our food from spoiling. It heats our water and cooks our food, and performs myriad other tasks for us that we are not even aware of on a daily basis. We don’t have to know how electricity works; we can enjoy all of its benefits without understanding it. Most of the time we take it for granted.

How wonderful our God is. Like electricity, he is all around us, doing things for us that we are not always aware of. “God has done all this, so that we might look for him and reach out and find him. He isn't far from any of us, and he gives us the power to live, to move, and to be who we are.” (Acts 17:27-28a) Yet it is easy for us to become so familiar with his power and presence and influence in every part of our lives that we begin to take him for granted. God still works miracles – they happen every day and are all around us, but we have become so busy that we have lost the ability to notice them.

Albert Einstein once said, “My sense of God is my sense of wonder about the universe.” He expanded on that idea in a longer quotation, “The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as all serious endeavour in art and science. He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as a feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that is there.” (Denis Brian, Einstein, A Life, New York, 1996, p.234.)

Let us never lose our sense of wonder. Let us never lose our sense of the awesomeness of God. “O Lord, our Lord, your greatness is seen in all the world! Your praise reaches up to the heavens; it is sung by children and babies.” (Psalm 8:1-2a) Children are blessed with a sense of wonder that we all once had, but most of us have somehow lost it as we grew up. Albert Einstein never lost his.

“Lord, help me to take note of the good things you do in me, for me and around me each day. Restore my sense of wonder and open my eyes to see the beauty of your creation. Teach me to love you and praise you every day for your goodness and awesome greatness.”

Wisdom from Above

There is a saying in Spanish, “Echando a perder se aprende,” which translated means, “We learn by ruining things.” We learn by trying out a new cake recipe that turns out flat, or buying a pair of great-looking shoes that always hurt our feet. Those are minor lessons learned at a small price. Too often, we pay a much higher price for lessons learned. Among the most serious, a bad investment that leaves us bankrupt, or a failed marriage (or two) before we find (or become?) the “right person.” May it be our prayer that God deliver us from learning in such a wasteful manner.

Here is the good news. There is a “wisdom from above [that] is first of all pure, then peace-loving, courteous, reasonable, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” (James 3:17) It is free for the asking, without the high price of ruined relationships or finances, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.” (James 1:5) Given that pure wisdom from above, that divine insight into the human condition, it is possible to learn our lessons by reading God’s Word, “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives.” (2 Timothy 3:16 NLT) It is possible to learn from the greatest teacher of all, Jesus, who said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29)

We can also learn by observing the mistakes of others without judging them, but if we judge them, we cannot learn from them. “Father, give us that wisdom from above, and make us more like Jesus, that we may ‘show in good behavior our good works done in the gentleness of wisdom.’ (James 3:13)” Amen.