Faith 101: the lens of love
One of Madison Avenue’s most iconic figures is the little pink Energizer Bunny. You remember the fuzzy pink, cymbal clapping stuffy that rolls perpetually along, powered by a battery that keeps going, and going, and going…
Take the battery out and that little bunny would get tossed in the waste like yesterday’s newspaper.
Using that bunny and its battery as a convenient metaphor today – I believe it is relevant to encourage with the reality and truth that there really is something that most purely and sustainably will both keep us going and get us to our desired destination. In making that statement it is fair and reasonable to also assert this: you can use any darn thing you want to power up your life. Greed – that’s a powerful battery! Lust – wow…super strong battery. Pride, Envy, Comparison, Revenge, Power, Etc.
Lions and Tigers and Bears…oh my!
Not trying to lay on parental guilt here – just want the cards on the table to make this point: You Choose what you put in the battery slots in your life. You choose. Yes, these convenient motivators will vie for your consideration and promise to power you up. But you choose. They don’t jump in there unless you open yourself for them to make their home in the power center of your life.
I wrote recently on the importance of knowing some things on faith, that faith is like a lens through which you see the world. Continuing the thought is rather important here, since how we see the world affects how we choose to live in it. It impacts how we work, how we parent, how we relate to others. It informs how we view the most transcendent of human experience and interact with all forms of creative beauty, nature and even our own selves. So we simply must be courageous enough to examine, to see and know, what is really and truly motivating how we live, work, parent, be a friend.
And this, friends, is radically courageous. Very, very few do this mid-stream in life, yet everyone has to do it by the end.
Socrates philosophized that the unexamined life wasn’t worth living. To be sure, we can all agree that having corroded batteries powering us through isn’t going to amount to the great lives we most deeply desire. You don’t have to be a studied philosopher to know that – you just have to be courageously awake and willing to look!
You’ve been to weddings, as have I. You’ve heard the infamous words of Apostle Paul read from his letter to the Corinthian Church about love. It really is worth a re-read. It isn’t a parenthetical side note for this little note I’m writing to notice that he happens to exhort his friends by stating that anything done without Love renders us to being, well, like that pink stuffed bunny. Life lived without love is like walking around clanging a gong or banging on a cymbal.
So here’s the encouragement today, one you can ponder as you sit at your desk or make your sales calls or putter around the house or get ready for your tee-time; We must ask ourselves if we actually love others. And I’m talking higher than love for what you can get from them. I’m talking, at a minimum, about the kind of love that mutually enjoys, appreciates and admires the other.
I’ve worked in sales most of my life. When I’m making sales calls, I must ask myself, going into the day, for help loving those I’m going to call on. Otherwise, I will just call folks and see if they have something for me (simply put). I know countless folks who call and call and call – fishing for a deal. I’ve done it too. That, friends, is self-seeking love.
If you love – and boy, do you have the capacity to do this! – the one you are interacting with today, everything changes. And here’s the bonus – you are the first recipient of the change. It will be 100% for the positive.
Yes – I (in sales) have to make my calls – but I grow, by examining and seeing anew, trading out (and up) for the highest-powered motivating force there is. I don’t just decide to love, I first receive it myself. There is much to learn and share on that matter indeed.
Faith 101 – the lens of love. Grow in faith by asking for help, positioning yourself to grow, waiting with the patience needed – grow in your desire to love without the expectation of personal gain. Your world will change, the world around you will change – forever!
Go live, work, sell, putter, golf, etc…go do that in love today.
Peace.
Craig Ronning
craig@r12coaching.com
