Loving Humbly and Simply in the New Year…
“Dear friends, we should love each other, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child and knows God.”
1 John 4:7 NIV
Sunset at National Shrine of Our Lady of La Leche at Mission Nombre de Dios, St. Augustine, Florida - December 2020
When I was growing up, my dad managed a grocery store. Most everything our family ate came from “the store,” including store-bought bread, meat, produce, eggs, as well as pasteurized and homogenized milk.
My cousins who lived in the same town ate differently. Summer produce, often pickled or canned, originated from their huge garden. My aunt baked the family’s bread, and my uncle traveled to a nearby farm to purchase eggs and milk, which was neither pasteurized nor homogenized.
I was used to processed milk and never liked the taste of what I called “farm milk.” I’m sure it was my over-active imagination that caused it to taste like grass!
What I did like, though, was the thick layer of heavy cream that rose and formed on the top of gallon jars of milk. My favorite dessert was my aunt’s homemade angel food cake, frosted with thick whipping cream she sweetened with the juice and finely chopped fruit of maraschino cherries. If I correctly remember the word heavenly was in the cake’s name!
I started thinking about the cream on my cousins’ milk recently when I heard stories about selfless acts of service performed by ordinary people during the last extraordinarily difficult year.
And, I’m asking myself: Hey Sue! What’s rising to the top in your soul as a new year begins?
Processed past beliefs or
fresh, rich, cream sweetened with the goodness of God’s love?
Dallas Willard, one of my favorite contemporary Christian thinkers, helped me process these questions with this definition:
Love means that we humbly and simply devote ourselves under God to the promotion of the goods of human life that come under our influence.
Those who come under my influence include friends, husband, children, grandchildren, neighbors, co-workers, clients, the waitress at a favorite restaurant, or clerk at the grocery store. I can commit to humbly and simply devoting myself to the promotion of their good.
Sounds simple, but as my Millennial friends might say right about now, “NOT!”
A couple thoughts come to mind as I ponder loving humbly and simply:
Loving humbly means I must at times put aside my own comfort, convenience, opinions, and words.
Loving simply means I will develop awareness concerning the condition of my soul, monitoring decisions to determine when it’s wise to:
say “Yes” or “No.”
start or stop.
plan or do.
What about you? How might your humble and simple devotion to God promote “the goods of human life that come under [y]our influence”?
Blessings as we ponder this New Year thought…
