Dilexit Deus mundum (Jn. 3:16)

John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life".

L-O-V-E consists of four letters and one word that is really familiar and very close to our hearts.  How do you define love? People say that love is not only a noun but it is a verb. Maybe this true story taken from the Human of New York can define what love is.

There was a daughter who really admired her dad so much and described him as the best dad ever. He was a dad that everyone would like to have as their own dad. Someone who never complained, cooked for the family, never got mad, was always there for her, and much more. He was described by his daughter as the gentlest person in the world. He lived to be 96 years old and not once in his life did this daughter question that he was her father. The truth only came out after her dad's death, when her son decided to get a DNA test. Her mom cheated on his dad and got pregnant; that was her.  And that the dad had decided to forgive her mother. And to raise her as his daughter. And to take the secret to his grave, because he didn’t want to hurt his daughter. “This fact didn’t change my amazing childhood”, said the daughter. It didn’t change my relationship with my father furthermore, she said. Denise, her aunt, told her that she had been there when her parents came home from the hospital. She watched her father carry her in the house. And she said she’ll never forget the look on my dad's face. She’d never seen him so happy in his entire life.”

I think we see eye to eye that the man, the dad, has a gold heart as wide as ocean who can love and forgive. He has performed what love is. And I think there are so many other inspiring love stories that we have ever read, observed, and experienced in our daily life.  Love comes in some types; sexual love in couples/partners (eros), love as friends (philia), and familial love (storge).  Apart from these three types of love, there is another type of love. This type of love, agape, is the love of God to his people and the greatest love of all.  The love enables Him to keep loving us despite the fact that He knows that we will not always return His great love as much as He loves us.  His hope never dismisses for His people. One day these people, we, will receive His love and will return His love. He is not afraid of loving us. He does not choose an easy and comfortable thing for Him. He chooses to love us even though He is hurt and dies on the cross. 

How can someone experience this greatest love? There are four basic principles that can explain this. The first principle, God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life. Second, but, why is it that most people are not experiencing the abundant life? Because man is sinful and separated from God. Therefore, he cannot know and experience God’s love and plan for his life. Third, Jesus Christ is God’s only provision for man’s sin. Through Him you can know and experience God’s love and plan for your life. The fourth principle, it is not enough just to know these. We must individually receive Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord; then we can know and experience God’s love and plan for our lives. The moment you received Christ by faith, as an act of the will, many things happened, including the following: Christ came into your life, your sins were forgiven, you became a child of God, you received eternal life and you began the great adventure for which God created you.

What a true love that Jesus has for us; a love that gives us an abundance, a fulfilling and eternal life. This should be the anchor of our faith in our ups and downs and in our relationship with other people; the time when we feel that we are a failure, the time when we feel worried, the time when we are sinful, the time when we are in our peak of success, the time when things seem to be perfect and fine, the time when we are hurt and in deep pain, the time when we are in the battle, the time when our emotional needs are not fulfilled, the time when we are misunderstood, the time when we are underestimated, the time when we are betrayed, the time when we are hopeless, the time when we are tied up with things, and in many more occasions.

Shall we faithfully keep loving God and other people on every occasion of our life? 

“Take me deeper, deeper in love with You. Deeper than I've ever been before. I just want to love You more and more”. This lyric of a song should resonate with our deepest prayer and long to keep our eyes to the prize; to this mission.

By Deisyi, Indonesia.

Exemplum bonorum operum (Tt. 2:7)

Who is your role model? Who has brought impact to your life?  I have one person that I admire most. Her unwavering commitment to serve God is my future-ideal-self.  She is a dear friend of mine.  I ran into her in the bank this afternoon.  She greeted me with her smiley face. Unfortunately, we could not talk for a long time as we both were rushing to go home. It was going to be sprinkling.

I respect her much due to her integrity. I still vividly remember the first time I got to know her. At the time, my daughter and I just moved to a new neighborhood. There were only two of us as my hubby had been on the other side of the world. This middle-aged-woman came together with her grandson, knocked on our door, and brought some cookies for us. I just clicked with her so well.  She is a lecturer and a mom to her two daughters. She is an example of a godly woman. She leads a simple life, and she treats all people the same. She is a loyal and helpful friend. If you need help, she is mostly available anytime. She will be the first person who is going to greet you if you meet her. She is humble, and she has finished reading the Holy Bible more than ten times. If you ask her a particular verse, she can say it in a minute as she learns it by heart.   She has passed so many hurdles in her life, but these adversaries fail to break her great faith in Lord. She always believes that God is good all the time. Her passion is to share the gospel with people that she meets. She is mostly on trips to remote villages and schools to tell people what Jesus has done to her life and to help people how they can have the conviction that they are true Christians. My friend is unstoppable.  I am frequently "envious" of her because she has so much treasure in heaven by bringing many souls to the kingdom of God.  Her life has inspired and has brought impact to numerous people including me.

The Book of Titus is a letter of Apostle Paul sent to Titus. From his letter to Titus, it can be observed that they are deeply attached as Paul addresses him as his “true child in a common faith” (1:4), and Paul regards him as his fellow worker for the gospel. The book of Titus contains Apostle Paul's advice and teaching to people in Crete and Titus. Titus is advised to be a pattern or an example to people of Crete. The teaching of Paul to set a good example does not only apply to Titus but, it also applies to each of us in present times. Our great teacher, Jesus Christ, has performed a perfect example. Jesus has only lived on earth for about 33 years. However, during His life, He demonstrated great works like feeding 5 thousand people with only five loaves and two fish, walking on the water, casting out the demons, healing so many diseases, raising people from death, and many more.  Above all, the biggest miracle and the most strikingly impressive work of all that He has performed are to die on the cross for sinful people so that these people will not be separated from God forever and ever. As a result, everyone who confesses and receives Christ personally to their hearts will have experienced abundant and eternal life. It does not mean a life without hurdles and adversaries. God’s power, mercy, glory, and goodness are revealed and manifested through those who believe in Him in these hard moments. How can we set good examples? It is seen from the fruits that we bear; the fruits of spirit manifested in our characters and the souls that we bring to the kingdom of God.

By Deisyi, Indonesia.

Nos diligimus (1 Jn. 4:19)

 “If love dwells in you, you have no enemy on earth”. This quotation, written by St Ephrem the Syrian, is meaningful and is not a piece of cake to put into practice as humans’ relation has its twists there and here.  People say that cultivating successfully and flourishing in relationships with other people is both an art and a long life process. 

The quotation by St Ephrem the Syrian hit the nail on head amidst my disappointment. I was hurt by a person that I consider as a friend. This message is totally lit as sometimes when I am over the moon, I might only read this message without further deliberation but when I am down, I could deeply resonate with the message. I believe each of us has ever experienced the moments that we are hurt by our closed ones. No one is immune to this situation. 

The psychologists and motivators have proposed so many methods and techniques on how to deal with other people. But, if we take a close look at these, the spirit behind all these teachings is to put ourselves as the center of everything. Unfortunately, all these things do not work well as humans are limited and our sins have corrupted our capacity to love God and people unconditionally. If we rely on ourselves, we will miserably fail.  

This verse should help us as the sons and daughters of God to build a good rapport with other people. God himself has demonstrated the true act of love by sending his begotten son dying on the cross. This deed shows one of God’s quality/identity that is love.  If we proclaim that we are Imago Dei, God’s image, we should live like He did. We are instructed to love people including the person who hurts us. Jesus prefers to keep loving us despite the fact that he knows that His love will not always be in return.    

When my friend had hurt me, I was tempted to feed up my ego by going away and shutting down all possible contact that I have with this friend without further discussion and reconciliation. And I would definitely end up being alone and lonely and I will never finish cooking up this issue in the future.  I will experience the same thing over and over If I don’t learn how to deal with this. Above all, the Word of God helped me to try to put myself on this friend’s shoes, find good things that this friend said, and talk about this issue with this friend. This was not easy as I had been reluctant to get interacted with people and I had lost my energy.  Again, the Word of God reminds me of being a son and daughter of God is not merely about His grace, blessings, and eternal life. Being a child of God means to readily suffer and bear the cross; doing uneasy and uncomfortable things out of my comfort zone.  Doing things that I don’t want to do and doing things that might be impossible for me to do. The grace of a child of God means to have the blessing to suffer with Him as Jesus has completed the hardest part and won the fiercest battle.  

By Deisyi, Indonesia.

Ad imaginem suam (Gen. 1:27)

I think each of us is familiar with the use of mirrors as it is oftentimes utilized by us in many ways. Most of the time, it is used to project how we dress up, how we beam, how we walk, and many more.  I even utilize it for rehearsing how to do public speaking or learning languages. What will happen if the mirror falls and it is shattered into pieces? Can it still function as it is supposed to be? It mostly can’t any longer!

How often in our lives, we look in the broken mirror to judge who we are? What is the broken mirror? It is the way we perceive and view ourselves and the way other people view ourselves. Our past bitter traumatic experiences have lots to do with our self-images.  These undeniably have shaped the way we think and make out ourselves. We can discern like we are not sufficiently good enough in the eyes of others. We are insufficiently lack of confidence and we become an attention seeker; to always look for others’ approval in everything that we do. We are thirsty for compliments and praises. Deep down, we feel profoundly insecure. If we heavily rely on the way people think and feel about us, it is an endless exhausting bumpy journey.

The way people view us is seriously limited and conditioned as they have their very own values and choices toward something. God’s word reminds us that the best mirror to look up about ourselves is God’s Himself because God made us.  God created us at first to be Imago Dei, the image of God. We are priceless not because of all things that we have but because we are created in Him and He died on the Cross for us. He died to suffer for our heart-broken, sins, and insecurity.  Grace alone enables us to have this sweet promise.  It is not by our good deeds and hard effort.  When we experience a deep and intimate personal relationship with Him, we surely feel loved and precious. Jesus is the best mirror that someone can have. Jesus, Jesus, what do you think of me?

By Deisyi, Indonesia.