“In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love.”

This got me thinking about some of my favorite quotes from Mother Teresa that I looked up not too long ago. I believe this woman has a lot to teach us on the subject of love. If we are to help spawn a movement who’s soul purpose is the love of God and the love of people, then we have to be willing to rethink our entire belief system. When pure divine love enters, all of a sudden our faith begins to take on a new form. For instance:

“Do not think that love, in order to be genuine, has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired.”

1 Corinthians 13, probably one of the most famous chapters in the Bible, speaks of the nature and effects of love. Over the past few years this passage has not only become central to my life’s message, but has also taken on a new form. While I once read, “Love suffers long and is kind”, as a command in order to love, I now realize that patience and kindness is actually a bi-product of love. In other words, love causes patience. The type of love that changes the world, isn’t the love that is applauded in the newspapers, but rather the love that never fails. It is love that perseveres through the darkness.

“Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat.”

The alleviation of poverty has become a central idea when it comes to love. We see people without food, shelter and water and something within our hearts aches. We gather up clothing and send it to the homeless. We pack containers of food and send it to war-torn countries. While this is well and good, I believe the greatest poverty lies in both the slums of Africa as well as the skyscrapers of New York City. The poverty of love.

“Everytime you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.”

I’ve had a running joke when I speak that the next great move of God will be a smiling movement. While I say it jokingly, I’m actually attempting to use humor as a catalyst for thought. Many of you might not have the opportunity to share my vantage point when it comes to gatherings within the Church. I’m able to see the entire crowd. It seems that the “seriousness of the Gospel” has gotten our panties in a wad. What’s the deal with all the frowning? I would say that it’s simply our emotional response to what we are feeling. Until we each experience divine love, it’s difficult to portray love in our hearts. I actually do believe that we are coming to a time where smiling will be a common occurrence and that simple act will change the world.

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God who is sending a love letter to the world.”

While I am the first to extend the dream that you can change the world, I feel that we have begun to believe that that dream requires us to be famous. We’ve forgotten that our love is not meant to write our names on the hearts of man, but rather His name.

“I try to give to the poor people for love what the rich could get for money. No, I wouldn’t touch a leper for a thousand pounds; yet I willingly cure him for the love of God.”

Paul McCartney once wrote, “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.”  There’s an common question that goes something like this, “For a million dollars, would you….” It’s somewhat thought provoking and entertaining to mentally test our limits when it comes to money. The truth is that where even money has its limits, love has no limits. Love will cause you to do crazy things. It becomes less of a choice and more of a reaction. A must. Like laying aside your deity and dying on a cross.

“I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.”

This I’m trying to learn. There comes a place in love, where the butterflies and ooey gooey’s come less often. Our modern society would say that this is the time to call it quits and move on. I believe this is the place where love is actually built. “Push through the pain”, they say. I would agree. Love eventually has a soothing effect. While everything around you says “no”, love says, “yes”.

“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”

Due to the fact that this blog is already somewhat lengthy, I will have to restrain myself. I could go on for days on this one quote. I can only say that this statement, along with the early Church’s example, I believe to be the key to our reformation. My destiny is wrapped up in yours. My life is wrapped up in yours. This mentality breeds love.

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

How true it is. While I said that the previous quote is the key to our being reformed into Christlikeness, I believe this one to be just as important. We spend so much time standing against people, that we lose track of loving them. We are more known for what we are against, rather than what we are for. Love covers sin. If we truly want to stand for righteousness, we must simply stand for love.

During some of my recent messages, I’ve been mentioning the life of Mother Teresa, the Albanian Catholic nun who spent most of her life ministering to the sick and poor of Calcutta, India. Both during and her life and subsequent, many have questioned the validity of Mother Teresa’s faith due to personal writings that expressed questions within her soul pertaining to her experience with and belief in God. It’s also interesting to note that one of the our great heroes of faith, King David, has his questions of faith recorded within our Book of Faith.

Questions are our key to truly understanding God. Without questioning that which we believe, truth is never held up to a mirror to see if what we believe to be true actually is. As I always say, truth can stand in the face of any scrutiny. It seems that one of our key spiritual principles found in scripture is mostly shied away from. That key is understanding. Throughout the Bible, mainly Proverbs, the idea of not only having knowledge of life and God, but actually understanding life and God is vital to our spiritual health. While wrestlings of the soul, to us, seem to be quite unhealthy, I’ve found that it is those “dark nights of the soul” that eventually lead to the light of truth. It is in our nature, as followers, to simply hear an idea and believe it. While some would call this “true faith” I would say that this is simply faith in what man has said. If we are to actually come to grips with what we believe and have that belief planted within our hearts, then questioning what we believe is imperative.  See my earlier blog on Repentance and the Scientific Method. God is the only one who can actually lead us into all truth.

Ok, one more.

“I know God will not give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish that He didn’t trust me so much.”

This is my official Mother Teresa quote for the day. Be inspired. Much love.

Anyway, so I finally watched “Slumdog Millionaire” last night. Let me begin by saying that I loved it. Really great character and style and a really fresh concept. Hopefully, I won’t lose my street cred with this statement, but my favorite aspect of the movie was the love story. Let me explain: I have an aversion to most love stories depicted in movies. For one, the story never changes. Boy meets girl. They fall in love and usually frolic in a field somewhere. Boy makes girl mad. Girl runs to her girlie friends. Boy wins girls back through various exploits. Boy and girl get married. While in a deeper sense I believe that most modern depictions of “love” in film, do nothing more than to promote a utopian form of love that ruins people’s, mainly female’s, perception of what love actually is. I somewhat jokingly refer to most romantic comedies as “female pornography”. The reason being is that most love stories depicted in books and film, create an expectation of a life in love that doesn’t exist. Men are visual. Women are emotional. One of the traps of pornography for men, is that is creates a fantasy version of their spouse. Modern love stories create the same ideas in the emotional arena of women and young girls. If your picturing me standing in the town square on a soap box, you’d be right.

For the most part, “Slumdog Millionaire” stays away from the previously mentioned cliches. Instead it gives an honest portrail of one pivitol truth… most of the time, love sucks. (SPOILER WARNING) Sure, in the end Jamal and Latika wind up together and millionaires, but the road there was hell. If you’ve seen the movie and really thought about it, Jamal and Latika barely knew one another. It wasn’t a story of tryng to figure out of he/she was “Mr./Mrs. right”, but rather a story of love surpassing the need for perfection. The truth is that relationships aren’t easy and love isn’t selfish. Usually love isn’t going to ride in on a white horse, but it might limp in on a dirty rickshaw.

The world, and much of the Church, is looking for a God that sits among the clouds. All while God showed up as a carpenter. We’re looking for a utopian form of revival, all while God is moving amongst the poor. We’re expecting a word from God by the man with the slicked back hair and nice suit, all while God is speaking through a child. Love is never what we think it should be. If we embrace what it is, we might not always be happy, but we’ll be whole. For those of you aspiring to marriage, remember… love sucks, but it’s worth it.

be inspired