Ask Not...

There are websites devoted to “the question of the day.”  These sites will ask you, or send you via e-mail, a different question every day in order to challenge you or allow you to compare your answer to the answers offered by others.  But many of us don’t challenge ourselves with a different question every day.  Instead, we ask ourselves the same question again and again day after day.  I can’t tell you what your question of the day is, but if you stop and think about it you’ll probably come up with it.

So, what’s the question you ask yourself just about every day?  Here are some possibilities:
What terrible thing will happen to me today? – or - What good thing will happen to me today?
What’s wrong with me anyway? – or – What’s wrong with them anyway?
How am I going to make it through this day?

You get the idea.  Do you ask yourself some question like that as you begin each day?  You probably do, in a rather automatic, sub-conscious way.  The question you ask yourself each day sets your expectations and perspective for the day.  The question you ask yourself frames the way you look at the day as you go through it and it frames the way you’ll evaluate the day once it’s over.  So, the question of the day is important in shaping your satisfaction level with your days and therefore with your life.

Mindful of that, let me suggest a question of the day that will serve us well.  Try this: “How can I bless someone today?”   In tribute to JFK I borrow from him to say, “Ask not what others can do for you; ask what you can do for others.”  It’s not exactly in the Bible, but it’s very compatible.

All You Need Is Love

It might seem hard to argue with the sentiment that all you need is love, but I would like to try.  First of all I need to say it’s not in the Bible.  Some people might want to suggest it is in the Bible by pointing to the first few verses of 1 Corinthians 13 where Paul keeps saying (in essence), “If I don’t have love I’m nothing.”  But even before that chapter concludes Paul says that “faith, hope, and love abide”.  In other words he lumps love in with two other vital aspects of our being; faith and hope.

To me, saying that love is all you need is like saying that warmth is all you need, or light is all you need.  The similarity is that I would respond to those assertions by saying that if it’s warmth you need, then an ever-renewing source of warmth is actually what you need.  If light is all you need, then an ever-renewing source of light is really what you need.  If you don’t have a dependable, lasting source for those things then you’re going to find yourself often without what you said you need, and sometimes desperately looking for another outlet of that essential resource to replace the last, now-depleted outlet.  To those who want to make a case that all you need is love, I suggest that what you really need is an ever-renewing source of love.

Does the Bible have anything to say about that?  Well of course!  The Bible says that God IS love (1 John 4:8 and 16).  It also says “we love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19).  In other words, God is that ever-renewing source.  God is the point of origination for love.  The only reason we can even ponder the concept of love, let alone experience the beauty of it, is because God took it upon himself to share and ship a bit of it our way.

So I would like to suggest a substitution.  Rather than all you need is love, I think it more accurate and appropriate to say that all you need is God, the source from whom all blessings flow.  Or as it says in the Bible, “The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (Lamentations 3:22-23).