love and stuff

Happy Valentine's Day!

I don't really feel like writing about love, so I'll write about "stuff." Something that has been on my mind stems from the topic of this past week's small group chapter. Since I was leading the discussion, I wanted to make sure I had a solid understanding of what the chapter was about...and in one word, it was about redemption. What does it mean to attach a redemptive value to something? What does it mean to make sure your purpose has redemptive value? This book is all about finding purpose, but when you DO find your purpose, there are more prerequisites?

As I read the chapter, I realized this was the answer to my question about what makes a good deed different between a Christian and a non-Christian. There are plenty of "good" people out there, that commit time each month to feeding the hungry or helping disadvantaged children. So what makes them different from Christians who do the same? And the answer is that a Christian's purpose in doing these things is to promote reconciliation between God and man. To patch relationships between God and man or between people...to advance God's kingdom through mentoring and teaching...to be a voice for the voiceless...those are things that give redemptive value to our actions, and that is the difference between ME passing out lunches with tracts in them and someone who just passes out lunches to physically feed the homeless.

But this isn't about a purpose that we can turn on and off. The author of the book wrote that our purpose is not a CAUSE, but a way of being. Meaning, our purpose is not a program or a church or a person...it is our everyday interaction with people, whether we're in our jobs or our positions as mothers/wives or church members. Attaching a redemptive value to what we do comes from a close relationship with God, because if we are walking closely with Him, it should come naturally that we want to share Him with others. And that goes back to the recurring theme in the book...to develop and improve our core relationship with God, first and foremost, and soon, we will see that what breaks our hearts will break His.