Monday, December 16

On Love

Now, now. I know several of you probably saw the title of this and freaked out. To those of you who just had a similar knee-jerk reaction to that of Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice upon hearing that Mr. Bingley is coming to town ("It is very likely that he may fall in love with one of them, and therefore you must visit him as soon as he comes.") I offer a hearty "pooh pooh" and tell you: CALM YOURSELVES.

This post is not going to be about falling in love. Check back in about thirty-five years for that one. (Sorry to disappoint.)

I've been hearing a lot about loving other people lately, from people who differ greatly in age, belief, personality, etc... So I just thought I would briefly offer some musings on the subject of love.

At Bible Conference at the college this spring, there was a speaker who talked about Calvary love, which loves in spite of all our shortcomings, and how this is the type of love that we should show in our lives. We love because love is of God and He first loved us, and we love unconditionally because that's how God does it.

Something that actually really convicted me about loving people was reading old letters from my cousin Sara. She was only about six years old, but what she said to me then really touched my heart reading it over again. (I'm going to change it just a little because the grammar and spelling is a little difficult to understand)

"I love you so much since you love me so much. Mommy loves you too for that card. Do you like this? Send your card to me and I will be happy. Will you be happy too? I hope you will be happy.  PJ loves you too. Philip loves you too, and Joshua and Caleb too, and Daddy and Mommy too.
The two best things are Jesus and love."

And in another one...

"Are you loving people?
I hope you are."

Sara's letters made me realize that I definitely have not been truly loving people. When you read her letters, you can tell that she was absolutely obsessed with other people - loving them, making them happy, putting them first. Seeing a little girl (albeit an extraordinary little girl) with so much capacity for love made me wonder how much more I should be able to love now. 

It's not always easy. People won't always love you back. (And they have rewarded me evil for good, and hatred for my love -Ps. 109:5

But God so loved the world. The whole world. I think I can at least try to love the folks in my little piece of it.

Let brotherly love continue. (Hebrews 13:1)
Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. (1 John 4:7)

Sunday, December 8

On Puns

I like puns, most of the time. I think deep down, everyone has an attraction to cleverness that we can't really ignore. Maybe that's why so many people groan at puns (even good ones).

THEY LOVE IT AND THEY CAN'T HELP THAT THEY LOVE IT AND THEY HATE THAT THEY CAN'T HELP LOVING IT.

People are weird like that. We like to control ourselves and not being able to control something like loving puns deep down in our soul is uncomfortable.

Even though puns are a pretty basic form of humor, they are not completely ridiculous. Trust me, I have a diagram. Sort of. And everybody knows diagrams grant instant credibility.

I went all Aristotle on you all this time and actually organized and defined several different types of humor and arranged them by ridiculousness. The lower they are on the list, the more ridiculous.

The first and lowest form of humor is also my brother's favorite: anything crude. Yes, I know that various bodily sounds are funny - SOMETIMES - but how much thought does it take to make a joke around them? Not much. So even though this type of humor may be funny, it is certainly the most ridiculous.

The next type is actually divided into two sub-types: knock-knock jokes and puns. Since many knock-knock jokes are actually puns, I thought it was appropriate to combine them. After all, a pun is a play on words, so "Knock knock! Who's there? Etch. Etch who? Gesundheit!" is a type of pun. However, I also think that knock-knock jokes are a lower type of humor even than puns, so they do come below puns. Puns are defined as jokes that exploit the different meanings of a word. And they are fun.

As for the highest form of humor, that remains undecided. For a while I considered sarcasm, but to an extent sarcasm is just being mean under the guise of a humorous quip. (Which is partially why it's so much fun) Being mean is something that most people can do quite easily, and consequently doesn't require much thought, so sarcasm is not the highest form. Another type I considered was those irritatingly long jokes written as epic poems or novels or encyclopedias, but those bug me so much that I couldn't handle thinking about them long enough to classify them. Since this classification of humor is a work in progress, perhaps I'll have another post for you later, but since it is not yet complete, I'll just show you my instantly credible diagram and go study for finals. (It's amazing what I accomplish when I need to be doing something else, yes?)

Meredith's Typology


??

SARCASM

PUNS/KNOCK-KNOCK JOKES

C R U D E    J O K E S

Wednesday, December 4

Messes of Pottage

My dog is not too brilliant. (If you've been unlucky enough to meet her, you know that quite well.)

So the other day, Mom had this huge bone left over from a roast she made. And because we love Grace in spite of her selfishness and stupidity, we let her have the bone so she could chew on it or something like that. Now although Grace has the mentality of a Great Dane, she is most definitely just a quivering little Cocker Spaniel who could hardly hurt a fly. She did almost no damage to that huge bone. Honestly I think she just liked having something to put in her mouth.

But she loved that thing.

She guarded that thing, too.

We found her randomly holed up with the bone in her crate after we gave it to her, and whenever we got too close, she would growl and bare her teeth at us. (Obviously she never learned that sharing is caring.)

We decided to let her just stay in there for a little. We figured eventually she would get bored and come out. But there she stayed, all morning, with a bone she had no clue what to do with, but felt she had to protect. Finally I pulled out her leash in an attempt to coax her out. She almost came, but for some reason felt that her useless bone was worth forfeiting a walk, her favorite thing in her entire doggy world.

I can see the total stupidity of her decision because she's my dog. But I do the same thing with my God. Rather than abandoning the corruptible things of this world for God's eternal riches, I stubbornly cling to my messes of pottage, only focusing on what satisfies my worldly lusts. God is offering me the best gifts imaginable, but I'm too busy chewing on my bone to walk with Him. If I would just look to Jesus, I would see that these things have no value compared to what He has laid up for those who diligently seek Him.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in his wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.