Ashlin, my 1 1/2 year old, keeps trying to bring a bottle of bubbles into the house.
Tamara keeps telling her, “Bubbles are an outdoor toy.”
She doesn’t like it. Each time she cries harder.
It made me think how we are kind of the same as Christians. We always try to sneak some pet pleasure or bottle of bubbles into a house where it doesn’t belong. When we can’t get what we want, we cry harder.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, “When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.”
He’s speaking metaphorically of how many spiritual things are means to an end, but when the end (the final thing) comes – you do away with the means.
For Paul, love was that end. 1 Corinthians 13 is an entire treatise about the supremacy of love.
This afternoon I’ve been watching a documentary about people leaving their lives in America to do what they can around the world to help orphan children… it makes me feel I must still be a little childish. I’m often more concerned with trying to bring bubbles in the house than I am with leaving my silly childish desires behind in order to fully give my life away to others.
The battle between love for self and love for others shows me I still haven’t realized maturity and “the supremacy of love.”
I’m not sure it’s something I’ll ever fully realize, but something deep inside tells me it is a thing we as Christians are meant to keep pursuing.
