What's the Secret?

We were getting ready to order our meal at a restaurant celebration planned by our sons to honor our 40 years of marriage when the server asked us a question and said she would give us time to think about the answer.  “What’s your secret (for staying together that long)?” were her words, and we began to ponder how we would answer.

A couple months earlier, when faced with quarantine time together at home 24/7, I had begun to think about similar things.  Retirement is closer than ever but not yet imminent for my husband, and we both decided during stay-at-home time that we weren’t quite ready for that reality!  I began to contemplate why that was so.  While I had no thoughts of wanting out of my marriage, I discovered that I’m not willing to give up my comfortable self-imposed schedule or my alone time yet.

At the beginning of our marriage, we were anxious to spend every minute together, and we focused our lives on shared interests.  But marriage doesn’t feel the same after 40 years as it did at the beginning.  Although we have always been very family-oriented and equally enjoyed our children and now our grandchildren together, life responsibilities have focused us in different directions from each other for nearly all of our marriage.  One of the fallacies of the Western model for retirement is this: after creating separateness for most of their lives, older couples are suddenly supposed to enjoy spending every minute together.  But neither of us is exactly the same person as when we got married, so this might not come naturally.

Then I realized that we didn’t unify ourselves when we were young marrieds, God did.  He is the only reason we have lasted for 40 years, and he can and will continue to unify us in our twilight years if we continue to trust him fully.  Without God, we are helpless and hopeless; but nothing is impossible with God.  In fact, he is even able to reveal himself and do his work in the middle of our sinful mistakes and selfishness.  The things that could serve to separate us are the very tools he uses to draw us closer to each other . . . if we let him.

Marriage is hard work, but thankfully we don’t labor alone.  No, today doesn’t feel like our wedding day; and life has thrown us some unanticipated curveballs along the way.  But here’s how we answered our restaurant server’s question: First of all, God has always been at the center of our relationship and marriage; without him, we might not still be here forty years later.  Secondly, divorce has never been an option for either of us; we’ve made the choice to stay with each other no matter how difficult the other person can seem at times.  And thirdly, we have allowed each other to grow and become different people – even when that growth leads us down paths we never envisioned in the beginning.  

If we trust God, then even change is part of the story he is writing; and we have always wanted to be willing vessels to be used by him – both together and separately.  As we prayed in a song at our wedding, may our life together be a sermon from him to those around us.  And may he continue to write our story in the future for his glory alone.  

What the World Needs Now is Love

The past couple of weeks have seemed like a sort of déjà vu back to my childhood.  Being raised in the tumultuous 1960’s, I remember a lot of events that were very similar to what has been happening around our nation recently.  And as a native Californian, I was living near many of these events – although admittedly I was protected by my parents and not fully aware of the importance or impact until later in life.  As a person with white privilege, my parents were able to make choices to protect me because their lives were not ruled by the fear my non-white schoolmates’ families experienced.

I remember watching President Kennedy’s funeral on television when I was 5 years old.  The year I turned ten there were two more prominent assassinations just two months apart – Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy.  When I was almost seven (and living in southern California), rioting occurred for several nights in the Watts district of Los Angeles.  A few years later, while living in the San Francisco Bay area, the Summer of Love brought 100,000 young people to the Haight-Ashbury district of the city; and riots in that area also occurred.  In 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated, and the Black Panthers were formed in Oakland (across the bay from where I lived) in 1966.  In the southern U.S. (far from where I lived), sit-ins, marches, and police brutality were regular occurrences in the 1960’s.  There were many other similar events happening all over the country – all fueled by people feeling the need for changes in social policy and government decisions and regulations. 

It appears that King Solomon was right: there really doesn’t seem to be anything new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9).  Although it has been over 50 years since these events from my childhood, there sadly seems to have been little change in our capacity as humans to treat each other with respect.  I am struck by the fact that people like George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery (and others) weren’t even born during that previous time, yet not much has improved.  How can we properly honor their memory and try to understand what life is like for people without white privilege?

Since the beginning of time, there has always been a mixture of human responses to those who are different from us, as well as mixed reactions to instances of injustice.  Sometimes the responses are peaceful, and sometimes they are violent.  In the Old Testament, when the Israelites sent spies into the Promised Land to check it out, only two returned with a true story based on faith in God.  Guided by fear, the other ten exaggerated the size and capabilities of the people in the land who were different than them.  Around the time of Jesus (and before), there were different reactions to the oppressive Roman rule in Israel.  The Essenes peacefully withdrew by themselves and lived like a community of hermits, while the Zealots were always trying to stir up violent insurrections against the government.  In the 1960’s, some Americans staged silent sit-ins and marches, while others used violence and force to get their message across.  In 2020, we still have the same varied options available to us.  And we have seen every option played out over the past couple weeks.  This is not an American problem; it is a human problem.

In the Old Testament, God told us what we need to do in order to stop repeating this history, and Jesus confirmed it again in the New Testament: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18 & Luke 10:27).  It’s that simple, and it’s that hard.  But here’s what I find interesting: in both passages, “neighbor” is defined not as someone who looks like us, acts like us, or shares our same beliefs – but precisely those that do not.  When God spoke these words to the Israelites, it was in preparation of entering the Promised Land where the Canaanites who inhabited the land were by definition very “different” than God’s chosen people.  And Jesus spoke these words to first century Roman-ruled Jewish people in a land filled with other Gentiles as well.  In fact, the context of Jesus’ words includes the parable of the Good Samaritan in order to answer the question that was asked, “Who is my neighbor?”  It might be easier to love the neighbors that are more like us, but we are called specifically to love those neighbors that are NOT like us.  We are even told to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44). 

I am only one person, and it is easy to feel helpless with the current state of the world.  But it seems that what the world needs the most really is love, and God’s way has always been to work through individual people in seemingly small ways to change the world for his kingdom.  Change starts when each of us chooses to love our neighbors as ourselves – one day at a time, one person at a time.  Especially the neighbors that we find the most difficult to love.  And we can start today – even if we have failed miserably in the past.  We can all choose to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.   

 

“What the world needs now is love, sweet love

It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of

What the world needs now is love, sweet love

            No not just for some, but 
          for everyone.” 

So What?

I’m a painfully practical person without an ounce of dreamer in me.  I always seem to be asking the “so what?” question.  Most people would probably consider me to be boring, but none of us can completely change how God wired us.

As this pandemic continues to dictate our daily lives, I’m struck by the fact that we are all stuck in the same place right now.  For some, it’s a prison; for others, it’s freedom.  Although many of those closest to me tend to see this more like a prison than a respite, I can’t say that I begin to understand exactly how they feel.  I recognize, however, that how we are responding to our current situation is greatly affected by how we’re wired.

While many are struggling to find meaning or purpose in their days right now, others are finding joy in developing new skills or having time to read new books or complete long-dormant projects.  Still others are finding ways to be useful to others during this unprecedented time in our era, and I applaud them.  There is no “right” way to spend our downtime as long as it is not self-destructive or abusive to others.  But all of us can probably look for “better” or “best” ways to spend our time – whether now or when things are normal.

Here’s the question that’s come to my mind – the “so what?” question for the COVID-19 quarantine:  when it’s all over, will there be any lasting changes in my life?  Will anything I am choosing to do today make a difference in the future?  We all have lots of time on our hands right now, but are we doing anything to develop character or prepare us for better service to others?  Or will we all go back to our individual, selfish lives and relative uselessness for God’s kingdom when it’s all over? 

I’m pointing fingers at myself as much as anyone else.  I hope that I am daily seeking God during this crisis in a way that will not be forgotten when it is over.  By default, God’s presence and friendship are currently replacing the presence and friendship of others; but let me not lose sight of the importance of God's presence and friendship even when I am able to return to the presence and friendship of others in my life.  As the quarantined weeks go on without an end in sight, I challenge you to think beyond right now and choose to start building a future that makes a difference.