Saturday, December 12, 2009

LOSING YOURSELF TO FIND LIFE

Perhaps the most challenging instruction coming from the lips of God's humanity is that of Jesus teaching his diciples that in order to gain life they must lose it. We become understandably stuck on this one for we are by nature selfish. Ah...and that seems to be his topic.

We want the gain life part; yet do our best to skip the lose part in order to reach His gain portion. It is not surprising our adjusted efforts don't work out. Stubborn as we tend to be, we still try to force His hand by showing him if we could just have a few more days or dollars, we can make our equation work without having to suffer the threat of His.

His way works. Ours doesn't.

So how do we lose our lives. One way is to do as He desired, care for one another. In caring for another (His way) we lose our lives when we do what we can to see attention is give to another. We lose our lives by bragging on the other staff members, or the other elders, or the other servants, but not ourselves. We live by using our light to shine toward others and their accomplishments; not our own.

When we lose our lives by giving generous applause to everyone in our path, reciprocation in gratitude will begin to return for we build up good people. We believe in people by giving to them compliments and assurances. In turn, our life begins to breathe deeper because we see strugglers beginning to develop into someone new.

Lose your life. Others will come alive. And you will be blessed. Jesus gave his....and we express gratitude for such a move day by day.

No comments: