Original Entry: May 6, 2008
McMinnville, OR
This is
how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world
that we might live through him. This is
love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an
atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear
friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 1 John 4:9-11
Yesterday
I had dinner with one of our graduating senior guys. He is a good kid but immature for his
age. He acts like a young man without a
father but I know his dad is still (physically) in the home although I have
never met or seen him. This young man won a scholarship through our church and
I was excited to finally meet the anonymous dad.
Dad was a
no-show.
Later,
this young man shared his disappointment that our banquet and his graduation were
the two biggest events of his life, but his dad prepared him that he would not
be at either.
“He is
shy.” This young man reasoned, “and
doesn’t like being around people. I know
he loves me.”
Really?
Shy? Gutless was the word I was thinking of. In all honestly it was actually
much worse.
I would
like to sit down with his absentee, dead beat, biological dad and say a few
things to him. Wouldn’t you? Suck it
up! Be a father! Be a man!
Here is where it gets really confusing.
This man professes to be a Christian man, a follower of Jesus Christ!
On a roll,
the young man continued to share about his dad’s unwillingness to support him
in any way through college and never tells him he loves him although he hedged,
“I know he loves me.”
I would
argue this is a man that either hates his son or has never become a man
himself. We see an adult boyhood of the
male gender all the time. Dad is around
but unknown. He is there but disengaged. He is present but too self absorbed to
be noticed. He has a tile but refuses to live up to it.
He has a
name but chooses to remain anonymous; stuck in idle, neutral-neutered.
Love is
not words. Love is sacrifice. Love
demands it. There is no love without
sacrifice. Love is not satisfied without
the redemptive quality of sacrifice.
“By this, the love of God was manifested
in us that God has sent His only begotten son into the world (9).”
Love
sends. Love manifests. Love responds. Love acts, period. Love does not reciprocate sacrifice for
sacrifice, gift for gift, but acts first.
Love throws the first punch (figuratively of course)!
To receive
God’s love is to reciprocate his love to others. Translated: to be a man following Jesus requires
the sacrifice of our lives on the behalf of others. Love does not sit on the couch, take a nap,
or read a book. Love acts.
