Whole
We become what we love.
I love sunshine. I wake up every morning and the first thing I do is acknowledge how much light is in the room. It will be funny when I move and can no longer tell the time, because here, I can tell within 15 minute intervals what time of day it is.
A room filled with morning light is among the greatest of my pleasures. If it were up to me, every room in the house would have big windows into which light would spill all day long. Great rectangles serving as sundials.
I was reading this morning about loving Jesus, thinking like him.
Since Christ suffered in the flesh, you too arm yourselves with the same mental disposition. — 1 Pet. 4:1
“You must love Jehovah your God with your whole heart and with your whole soul and with your whole strength and with your whole mind.” — Luke 10:27
Jesus acknowledged this as the most important command in the Mosaic Law. Notice that our love for Jehovah involves our heart, which includes our desires, feelings, and emotions. It also involves our whole-souled devotion and our strength—including our energy.
However, loving Jehovah also involves our mind, which includes the way we think about matters. Of course, we can never fully understand all of Jehovah’s thinking. But we can better understand God’s thinking by studying “the mind of Christ” because Jesus perfectly reflects the thinking of his Father. — 1 Cor. 2:16
I like the commentary because it defines our whole being: desires, feelings, emotions, our energy, mind, thought.
These are reasonably put into two categories:
HEART 💙: desire emotion feeling
MIND 🧠: logic thought energy (this one arguably could go either, but we need symmetry, reader!
I was always of the mind that the second category was fully controllable. That we just switch on thought-control and we can Vulcan our way out of anything.
But I discovered last year that our biology can override our ability to think. I was waking up every night at 3 am in tears. I would curl up on the floor and wedge myself under the bed because it was the only place I felt safe. For three hours I would pray, and cry and listen to music or meditative spoken word recordings to try to engage my mind. it was STUCK on feedback loops of everything wrong in my life. Bad decisions, family strife, childhood trauma, work, death, overload, loss—you name it, i was anxiety-maxing about it.
This went on starting in April through August when I finally saw a doctor. And with the right drugs, the chemistry that was starting the cascade was stalled.
The heart, however. Even the Bible says it's treacherous. It's this wild thing that can burn worlds or save a soul with nothing more than words.
and sometimes, it's the heart that reigns in our brains.
This is why I love Nick Seluk's' The Awkward Yeti
https://www.theawkwardyeti.com/
Few thinkers capture the dynamic quite as well as his heart/mind characters. Funny, I rarely see the actual yeti in this strip.
We are most powerful when our minds and hearts are unified in pursuit of goodness. How goodness is defined changes based on whom you ask.
And a wise person will always ask the Maker what is good. And sometimes we'll get a definite answer, others we'll get a 'well, it depends'.
It's in the 'it depends' zone where we get to be whatever we want. Giving a gift? What should you give? Well, it depends. Don't give a diabetic a basket of sugar, but beyond that... could be something you like, something they like. Could be just note or letter.
Whatever good your hand finds to do, do.
Sometimes the best 'good' we can do, is nothing at all.
If we truly love God and try to follow the example of his son, we'll be just fine. We won't get it right all the time. IN fact we'll get it wrong a lot. Sometimes, most of the time. From time to time, all of the time.
The important part of the equation is that we never give up, ever stop trying. That's what 1 Peter 4:1 is really saying. 'Arm yourselves'. Master that tool and it's a force multiplier. But it isn't a magic talisman. No soldier is infallible nor is he un-injure-able.
But, to be armed is to be prepared for the war of life. And it means that even though we lose a battle here and there, we can be victorious in the war of our lives.
OH! The sun has climbed beyond shadow-making on this box-shaped hole to the world, that means it's time to ambulate. I think I smell breakfast!
And then—your Keeper has to get to the salt-mines!
Last Thoughts:
I saw this and realize the writer intended this to be 'Lover' in a romantic sense. But framed through the lens of the discussion above, what greater lover can we have than God? Only through the Creator are we truly appreciated and not only matched but exceeded.
Perfect Match, indeed!
💙💜💙💜💙💜💙💜💙💜💙💜
Isa 42:17 “I will lead the blind in a way that they do not know And cause them to tread on unfamiliar paths. I will turn the darkness before them into light And turn the rugged terrain into level land. This is what I will do for them, and I will not abandon them.”
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“May your seas be wide enough for wonder, your harbor always waiting, and your light never fail when another soul is searching.” – The Lantern Keeper