I was watching Home Alone 2: Lost in New York yesterday afternoon (Christmas movie watching is at least a daily occurrence in my house these days!) One scene really caught my attention... I was looking for a light & fluffy couple of hours filled with laughs and what I got was a lesson in life. And since it 'tis the season for sharing I thought I would share it with you all :o)
In this scene MacCaulay Culkin (playing Kevin McCallister) and an actress I've not seen before or since (playing Bird Lady) sit in the lighting/storage room above an opera house and listen to a symphony together. Here is a snippet of the conversation that caused me to think:
Bird Lady: I'm just afraid if I do trust someone, Ill get my heart broken.
Kevin McCallister: I understand. I had a nice pair of Rollerblades. I was afraid to wreck them, so I kept them in a box. Do you know what happened? I outgrew them. I never wore them outside. Only in my room a few times.
Bird Lady: A persons heart and feelings are very different than skates.
Kevin McCallister: They're kind of the same thing. If you wont use your heart, who cares if it gets broken? If you just keep it to yourself, maybe it'll be like my Rollerblades. When you do decide to try it, it wont be any good. You should take a chance. Got nothing to lose.
The obvious question now on my mind is "how much have I been using my heart?" Whatever your answer is I promise you could use it more. Think of the love Jesus displayed as a model for us when he died at Golgotha... Obviously that's not the way we will be displaying our love but until we've surpassed that (which we never will) our job of loving people and God is not finished. We are after all supposed to sow God's love for people through our own lives... I know it can be scary and we all have trouble trusting at some point in our lives but love is the most important thing we can do, it's the best quality to carry in your being and if you have all else but not love you are really nothing... So get past the fear and walk in love.
Jesus said love was the most important command he could give us "Jesus said, "The first in importance is, 'Listen: The Lord your God is one; so love the Lord God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence and energy.' And here is the second: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' There is no other commandment that ranks with these." Mark 12:30-31 Msg.
Further, 1st John 4:8 states "Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love" and 4:20-21 extends that love to others "If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both."
Lastly, love is more than just a word and an action or two... More than a feeling, it has to be your whole being... Your motive and your priority. Love has a lot of characteristics that sets it apart from just pretending to be nice and painting a smile on your face to fool people or yourself into thinking you've got it all together and I propose that while we take some time off from our respective careers this Christmas season let's take some time on growing love in ourselves and sharing it with other people! One of my favorite and I believe most detailed descriptions of love was written by Paul the Apostle... It's how I measure love and know I still have lots of work to do, so if you're left wondering how to grow love (as I have been many, many times) use this passage as instruction: "If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love. Love never gives up. Love cares more for others than for self. Love doesn't want what it doesn't have. Love doesn't strut, doesn't have a swelled head, doesn't force itself on others, isn't always "me first," doesn't fly off the handle, doesn't keep score of the sins of others, doesn't revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth, puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end." 1st Corinthians 13:1-7, Msg.
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