love

by

Shopping Doesn’t Mean The Same Thing For Everyone

Let me ask, is shopping a leisure activity or is shopping a hunting activity for you? 

shopping doesn't mean the same thing for everyone

There was a time when hunting was far more prevalent than shopping. … But when you think about it, now shopping has mostly taken the place of hunting. 

The days of going out to kill an animal so you could have meat for dinner have been replaced. Now we go to the grocery store and pick out a juicy steak or frozen pre-cooked ribs already sauced.

We hunt for bargains at the store. We go to malls to gather the items from the list we made before we left home.

But for some people shopping is not so much a hunt, or a replacement for gathering the necessities of life. No, shopping is more of a leisure activity.

So when you shop, is your approach more like a hunt or an activity? 

… To be fair, even hunting has taken on a more leisurely tone lately. I have a friend who just got back from hunting but didn’t shoot anything. He was 15 feet from a moose but they weren’t in season so he didn’t bag the prize. 

There was a time if you came back from the hunt empty-handed you and your family were going hungry. It was imperative that you hunted until you had something to bring home.

Still there’s a distinction between shopping as a hunt or an activity.

For me, when it comes to shopping, I’m more of a hunter than an activity seeker. I like to get in, bag that item I’m looking for and get out.

Recently, due to my wife Lily not feeling all that well, I’ve been doing most of the grocery shopping. This is not my forte, but I’m getting the job done.

Recently on one trip I had to stop a fellow shopper to ask her where I would find egg noodles (at least I was in the right aisle). 

She showed me where the noodles were and told me there were different shapes, to which I said, “I guess I’m going to have to phone a friend for this one.” I had to phone Lily to find out which shape of egg noodles she wanted. That meant using two “lifelines” on one item on that shopping trip. 

The biggest thing I’ve learned lately about shopping is that I’m a hunter. 

… Although at some places it could be tempting to turn shopping into an activity. At Costco there is such a variety of items, an abundance of products and samples to lure you in to making it a leisure outing. 

But not for me – one time I even went to the checkout with one item. The guy in front of me was astonished and asked how I was getting out of there with one thing. 

I’m a hunter, man!

The other day at Costco I picked up four items. When I got home, Lily asked what new things they had in the store. I didn’t know; I never looked. I got my four items and quickly got out. 

No leisure strolling for me. 

Lily, on the other hand, likes shopping and looking at the different items … and that’s how very differently we approach shopping.

Here’s the thing: It is a good thing God’s approach to you and me is a hunter and not just a leisure shopper. There is a song I’m reminded of that gives a picture of this. The song “Reckless Love” has a couple of lines that say, “Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending, reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights ‘til I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine”. If you ever get the sense that someone is seeking you, hunting you down, it’s God … and He’s doing it out of love. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How do you need to respond to God’s love for you today? Leave your comments and questions below.

Subscribe to my blog and receive posts like this one in your email inbox.

by

Can You Really Love Enough?

According to Hughie Lewis, “Love is a Curious Thing” – that was the title of one of his songs from the 80’s.  

But love is also complicated. 

Last week when I was writing my sermon, I was struck by an aspect of love in a fresh way: When you love someone, that love must grow or it will die. 

In other words, if you don’t continue loving more, you will end up loving less and less. 

Love decays if left unattended.

That is true with everything in this world. 

You leave metal out … it rusts. You leave grass alone … it gets full of weeds. You leave food out … it goes bad. You leave a pond without any water flow or some kind of filter … it gets stagnant. 

Pretty much everything decays, rots, or spoils if you don’t treat it, take care of it, or help it along in some way. 

There is plastic, however … it seems to last and last and never go away. Landfills are full of it; the oceans have flotillas of it. But even with plastic, scientists are finding that if you leave a plastic bottle of water in a warm environment long enough, it will produce cancer-causing molecules in the water. 

Nothing stays the same. 

Mountains erode; natural disasters get more disastrous. Why would we ever think that love can just stay the same, that it doesn’t change? 

There is an old joke about a couple who went to see a marriage counsellor. The wife complained that her husband never told her that he loved her. The man replied, “I told her I loved her on our wedding day and, if anything changes, I will let her know.” 

Unfortunately, that’s not true. Your love can’t stay the same; it will either increase or it will decrease.

When a couple gets married, they can look in each other’s eyes and say, “I love you with all my heart” and it’s true. 

But after a few years, that couple has shared many experiences – some really good ones and some not so good. 

If knowing each other more through those experiences doesn’t cause each one to increase their love for the other, it will produce a decrease. 

The more you know, the more you have to love or you will love less because you now know more. 

Perhaps we have so many marriages that end in divorce because people are still loving their spouses with the same amount of love they did when they got married – only that’s not enough love to hold a couple together after a few years. They need to love more.

For love to increase in the wake of experience, you have to embrace the good and you have to deal with the bad. 

You must determine to expand your love, nurture it, care for it, and constantly attend to it. 

You can’t love enough. There is always more.

Here’s the thing: If you recognize that God loves you, and sent Jesus to save you from hell, and your reaction to that is to love God in return, that is truly a great thing. But unless you love God more than the day you gave your heart to Him, you will love Him less. As you get to know Him more and experience more with Him, you have to love Him more, or you will love Him less. It’s that simple; love doesn’t stay the same. You can’t love enough. 

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: How are you going to love God more? Leave your comments below.

by

Love Is A Curious Thing

“Love is a curious thing” – that’s part of a line from a song by Huey Lewis and the News.

Bachelorette rose

The other night I was forced to watch the ending of the Bachelorette. That’s right, I said I was forced, outnumbered with nowhere to go.

It was just the last four minutes of the show, but that was where it all happened. Two men went to propose to one woman. One guy was sent away sad, and all the other guy could say was, “I love you”.

Here’s another line from that song, “Power of Love:: “makes a one man weep, makes another man sing”. Ha, that’s what we saw in the show.

Huey Lewis must be a prophet. Years ago he said that that was the power of love, and the other night, the Bachelorette proved him right!

The men came separately, at different times, each getting out of a black Escalade. The first thing you saw was their shoes and socks.

I didn’t like the first guy’s socks, and from the groans on the other side of the room, the other two in the room were disappointed that this guy was getting out of the car first.

Apparently it means (if you’re a Bachelorette fan) that he will not be the guy the Bachelorette picks.

If only that first guy could have chosen a different pattern on his sox he might have been the guy. I don’t think the socks even went with his suit; I certainly wouldn’t have worn them.

The first guy said all the right things. He was so confident that she was going to pick him. Thing is, we all knew that he was going to be shot down hard.

And the girls (my wife and daughter) were right. The Bachelorette didn’t even let him get down on his knee to propose to her. She cut him off and said he was not the one.

She was really heart broken, you could tell. She said she loved him but he still was not the guy she was going to choose.

A lessor known music group, “Little Feat”, sang about this in a song called, “Two Trains”: “Now there’s two trains runnin’ on that line, one train’s me and the other’s a friend of mine.”

The Bachelorette show is set up in just that way. The second guy showed up after in an identical Black Escalade. He was just as confident, though there was a hint of nerves.

What if she picked the other guy over him? He almost tripped over one of the platforms that was on the beach to give them stability as they made their entrance.

Oh, but he was that lucky guy; he was the one she wanted over the first guy. She loved them both but she could only pick one, and she picked number two. I thought he had a better choice of socks anyway.

Lowell George who wrote the song, “Two Trains”, thought this was the way to go. He said, “You know it would be all right, be just fine, if the woman took one train and left the other behind.”

And that’s just what she did. The Bachelorette, now a popular TV show in 2016, was fashioned after two songs written in 1973 and 1985.

Here’s the thing: In love we have to choose one or another. There is a winner and a loser. But with God, He has chosen us – all of us – to show His love to. All we have to do is accept it.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Have you taken God up on His love proposal yet? Leave your comments below.