Last week I attempted to eat a blazin' wing from Buffalo Wild Wings. You see, Blazin' is the hottest sauce B Dubs has to offer. One of the campus pastors ordered 12 Blazin' wings, and he asked if I would try one. Soon the entire staff was urging me to eat one...and since I usually don't give into peer pressure, I ate one. It was one of the hottest things I had ever eaten. My eyes started to water, my lips were on fire, and my throat closed up for a second. I thought I was going to die, but I survived the Blazin' wing. A couple minutes later, I realized I had to go the bathroom, so I got up from the table and made my way to the men's restroom. As soon as I opened the door to the bathroom, I noticed that there were two women washing there hands at the sink. Also, there were no urinals in the bathroom. Because I was still messed-up from the stupid hot wing, I stood there in the doorway for a couple seconds until it hit me. I was in the ladies bathroom. One woman actually had to say, "This is the women's restroom," before I moved. Oops. I blame the wing.
I have finally recovered from the bathroom debacle and have vowed to never eat a Blazin' wing again, but in the meantime I'll continue to live life on the edge.
The past couple of weeks has been kind of crazy. I have been able to preach to the Middle school students on Sunday mornings, and I have been given more responsibility with the whole middle school program. Also, my girlfriend's grandfather passed away. His name was Tom Alvey, and he lived a long, fulfilling life. There were several things that stuck out to me about Tom. First, he must have had a lot of patience because he had 6 daughters and 1 son....SIX daughters! I've been able to get to know all of his daughters (Christine's mama and aunts) and they are awesome ladies. I've never been around a family that has so much fun. Second thing I learned about Tom was that he LOVED his wife, Kitty. I only had a couple of conversations with him, but every time he brought up how much he loved his wife. They had been married for 61 years, and it was just so encouraging and refreshing to see how much they loved each other. Tom would often make jokes about how Nana (Kitty) had to put up with him, but you could tell that wasn't the case. Tom had open heart surgery about 8 or 9 weeks ago, and he never really recovered from it. He spent his last 2 months in the hospital. He wasn't always conscious, but the family was always there at the hospital.
Right after his surgery, he didn't wake up for a little while because the amount of anesthesia they used with a combination of his age. But one time when he wasn't really responding to anyone, Nana gave him a kiss on the cheek and his heart rate went up. It was just really cool to see how much he loved his family and how much they loved him back. It's really neat to see love at work.
Unfortunately, not everyone experiences this kind of love. Two weeks ago at our High school youth group, Cody had a time where students could come up and share what God was doing in their lives. There were some encouraging stories of students who have decided to start following God despite their pasts and how God is giving them strength. Then a girl named Haley stood up and shared her heart...or her broken heart is more like it. Her dad and mom divorced when she was younger, so she has always split time between the two. Just that week she went over to her dad's house, and he looked her straight in the eyes and said, "I don't love you. I haven't loved you for the past 7 years." When she said that, my heart broke for her. I can't imagine whats it like to go through life knowing someone who you care deeply about doesn't care if you were to take another breath.
Why does this happen to a great girl like Haley? I don't know. In the Bible, there is a book called Ecclesiastes. Its all about how Solomon goes through life trying to find fulfillment in wisdom, work, pleasures and riches. However, none of these things can fulfill Solomon. He finds that nothing in this world can fully satisfy the cravings of the human heart. What is interesting is that the very next book in the Bible is Song of Solomon. This entire book is about love between a man and a woman. This entire book talks about love and how much it satisfies him, and it is written by the same person who wrote Ecclesiastes, Solomon.
In Scripture, the love between God and humanity is depicted as a love between a husband and wife. Ephesians 5:25 says, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her..." So I think it is safe to say that Love is the answer to Solomon's quest in Ecclesiastes. Love is the only thing that can truly satisfy the human heart...pure, unadulterated love.
This is the time of the year when it seems to be easy to love people. Everyone is happy because of Christmas, time off of school, or maybe they are getting a Christmas bonus. But just remember that there are some Haleys out there...What can you do to love on someone this Christmas season?
1 comment:
Great post - You did an awesome job with identifying two things that were very true about my grandpa.
I also love the illustration of Christ loving the church as His bride - this is making more and more sense to me as I move toward getting married.
And you've heard my story on the women's restroom - at least you had the presence of mind to realize no urinals = not the men's restroom!
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