Go Ahead and Light the World

As it has the past several years, our Church has a worldwide campaign for the month of December called #LightTheWorld. Each year it’s a little different. This year has the theme One by One. The idea is to do small acts of service every day. And if enough of us do that, we light the world—we make it a much brighter place. Here’s this year’s introductory video:

An innovation this year is a daily prompt that comes to your phone (sign up here), suggesting a small act you can do that day. If the day’s idea doesn’t work for you, you can ask for an alternative. It’s suggested that you use the hashtag #LightTheWorld on social media, so we can all see how it spreads. I’ve had friends doing that. But, I don’t really understand hashtags, and also I’m hesitant to tell what I’m doing. Hard to know whether that’s because I feel like my contributions are so small, or are things I would be doing anyway, or if it’s because of modesty about the quiet service I’m doing. Suffice it to say I’m trying to do some little good thing, intentionally, every day during this lead up to Christmas.

Yesterday’s prompt was “Share a scripture with a loved one.” I like this one:

Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.—Jude 1:21

The day before was “Perform an act of service for a family member.” That day I did a thorough cleaning of the bathroom floor, with Mr. Spherical Model. We used a pressure washer along with a carpet shampooer to suction up the water. It was hard and messy. And more his service to me than the other way around. But then I cooked dinner for him, which I don’t always do on a Saturday.

One day was to donate to a reputable global charity. We had talked about what charities we would give to this year, which was more than usual despite not having more funds. But I added to that a small donation (the amount of a music lesson I earned) to Hillsdale College, from whom I have benefited much but to whom I had never contributed. (You can donate here.) 

One day was “Offer a prayer of gratitude for Jesus Christ and His mercy.” That was both easy and something that is part of daily life. But I did it intentionally that day.

The #LightTheWorld 2019 Calendar
found here

We should be doing these things all year. But, even so, refocusing on what we should be doing helps us do more of it. So I’m glad that’s one of the benefits of the Christmas season.

Our reading this past week, for church, was the three epistles of John plus the epistle of Jude. It seemed appropriate for this time of year that the theme of these chapters is light and love.

In 1 John 1:7 we’re told we should start with fellowship to God, and that leads us to fellowship with our neighbors. This is how we share our light together.

In 1 John 2:9–11 we learn that anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. But anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light.

Being holy, or filled with light, or any other way to define being followers of Christ, is about more than avoiding doing wrong, or sinning; it’s about showing love toward one another.

Is the world better when we do these things? Look at the list in 1 Corinthians 13. We’re expected to show Christlike love:

·         By being long-suffering.

·         By being kind.

·         By ridding ourselves of envy.

·         By not making ourselves out to be better than we are or better than others.

·         When our behavior is not unseemly—that is, not indecent or unbecoming.

·         By not being selfish or self-centered.

·         By not being easily provoked.

·         By thinking no evil.

·         When we don’t take joy in evil-doing.

·         When we do take joy in truth.

·         When we’re open to believing,

·         And to hoping,

·         And when we endure in the light no matter what.

Is the world better off when people try to emulate these attributes than when they do not?

Put another way, do we have more civilization when people choose these behaviors and ways of thinking? An honest person would have to say yes. We’d rather live with kind, unselfish, honest neighbors than mean, self-serving, dishonest neighbors.

photo by Hakan Erenler

We’d rather live in the light than in darkness.

So let’s spend this month trying a little more intentionally to add light to the world each day. The world will be that tiny bit brighter. And, if we do that every day, it may become a habit beyond the month.

Go ahead; #LightTheWorld.

The Holy Day

This year's Christmas card photo,
featuring two of my grandchildren

Merry Christmas!

We’re celebrating a holy day, to honor our Savior Jesus Christ. We’re asked to become more like Him.

So, what does that mean? What does a life look like, when following His example? We can get some of these qualities from scriptures, among them the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, and in I Corinthians 13, which defines His love:

·         Loving

·         Kind

·         Meek

·         Humble

·         Seeking righteousness

·         Merciful

·         Pure in heart (honest, integrity, without guile)

·         Peacemaker

·         Longsuffering

·         Without envy

·         Not easily provoked

·         Seeks truth

·         Avoids iniquity

·         Gentle

·         Self-sacrificing

And we could add a few extras that don’t come up as often:

·        He sees a person’s heart, always knowing what a person really means or intends, and works with that person, as a friend would, to encourage living better.

·        He always knows God’s will and makes that His own will.

·        He combines truth and kindness, but He doesn’t modify the truth to avoid offending.

·        He doesn’t mollify. He doesn’t accept evil, even when He deeply loves the person doing the evil.

Imagine if all the people on earth lived the way Jesus did—or at least were earnestly striving to. On the Spherical Model, Jesus Christ leads to way to Civilization. He moves us ever northward, toward Him.

One of my favorite speakers, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, says, 

Considering the incomprehensible cost of the Crucifixion and Atonement, I promise you He is not going to turn His back on us now. When He says to the poor in spirit, “Come unto me,” He means He knows the way out and He knows the way up. He knows it because He has walked it. He knows the way because He is the way.[i]

Above all other lives, His birth, life, death, and resurrection, are most worth celebrating.

His birth story shows us beauty in humble circumstances. Many of my favorite Christmas carols tell the story. I’ll share just a few verses.

This is the final verse of the Alfred Burt carol, “We’ll Dress the House with Holly Bright”:

And ye who would the Christ Child greet,

    Your heart also adorn,

That it may be a dwelling meet

   For Him who now is born.

Let all unlovely things give place

To souls bedecked with heavenly grace,

That ye may view His holy face,

   With joy on Christmas morn.

Here’s another Alfred Burt carol, the ending of “Some Children See Him”:

O lay aside each earthly thing,

And with thy heart as offering,

Come worship now the infant King,

‘Tis love that’s born tonight!

I’m noticing endings of a lot of songs. This is the final verse of the Christina Rosetti poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter”:

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.

As a family, we’ve been retelling the nativity story as part of our Christmas Eve tradition for thirty years. We have a script. We dress up in costumes, and we all take part. Every time there’s a new baby, we use a real baby instead of a doll to be the baby Jesus.

My Christmas card is always a depiction of some part of the nativity story. This year we had my new granddaughter and her big brother play the parts of the baby Jesus and a shepherd (above).

Many of my Christmas decorations are depictions of the nativity. I like the goodies and presents and fun as much as the next person, but the real celebration is what is at the core of this holy day, and that is Christ.

If you want a beautiful visual retelling of the Christmas story, spend eight minutes on this video, produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints:

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[i] Jeffry R. Holland, “Broken Things to Mend,” Ensign, May 2006, p. 71.

Love Is an Action Verb

As I mentioned in Monday’s post, I’ve spent a lot of time defending the natural family, so there’s been little time to talk about how to enjoy better family success. Today is related.  I have a long list of posts on defending marriage, the institution itself. I’ve done a lot less on how to enjoy better marriage success. But I’m thinking about Valentine’s Day, coming up tomorrow, so here are a few collected thoughts.

In Stephen Covey’s classic book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, he tells this story:

At one seminar where I was speaking on the concept of proactivity, a man came up and said, “Stephen, I like what you’re saying. But every situation is so different. Look at my marriage. I’m really worried. My wife and I just don’t have the same feelings for each other we used to have. I guess I just don’t love her anymore and she doesn’t love me. What can I do?”

            “The feeling isn’t there anymore?” I asked.

            “That’s right,” he reaffirmed. “And we have three children we’re really concerned about. What do you suggest?”

            “Love her,” I replied.

            “I told you, the feeling just isn’t there anymore.”

            “Love her.”

            “You don’t understand. The feeling of love just isn’t there.”

            “The love her. If the feeling isn’t there, that’s a good reason to love her.”

            “But how do you love when you don’t love?”

            “My friend, love is a verb. Love—the feeling—is a fruit of love, the verb. So love her. Serve her. Sacrifice. Listen to her. Empathize. Appreciate. Affirm her. Are you willing to do that?”

            In the great literature of all progressive societies [i.e., civilized societies, not socialist societies as the word progressive now connotes], love is a verb. Reactive people make it a feeling. They’re driven by feelings. Hollywood has generally scripted us to believe that we are not responsible, that we are a product of our feelings. But the Hollywood script does not describe the reality. If our feelings control our actions, it is because we have abdicated our responsibility and empowered them to do so.

            Proactive people make love a verb. Love is something you do: the sacrifices you make, the giving of self, like a mother brining newborn into the world. If you want to study love, study those who sacrifice for others, even for people who offend or do not love in return. If you are a parent, look at the love you have for the children you sacrificed for. Love is a value that is actualized through loving actions. Proactive people subordinate feelings to values. Love, the feeling, can be recaptured (pp. 79-80).

 

image found on Pinterest

Some people think raising daughters is tougher than raising sons. Certainly it’s different. But youth leader Elaine Dalton (author of A Return to Virtue) once said something that stuck with me as key:

“The greatest thing a father can do for his daughter is to love her mother.”

She’ll know how to value herself as a woman, and expect and accept the kind of love you want for her, if she sees her father setting the example of love with her mother.

Covey and Dalton are both Mormons, and while Mormons emphasize family strength and forever marriage, many others also have insights into how to do it.

We were given a useful book a few years ago: Love and Respect, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs, with the subtitle The Love She Most Desires, The Respect He Desperately Needs. The premise is that, among the differences between men and women are these basic needs. A woman needs to be cherished—to be loved unconditionally. A man needs to be respected—maybe even in order to grow in respectability.

So, if you are a wife who wants to be loved, start with respecting your husband—not waiting until you think he meets some standard you have set for being worthy of respect, but starting with the understanding that he comes worthy of respect, and your showing that makes it more true. And, as a husband, while doing the respectable job/money-related work might help make you more respectable, you’ll get more by showing your love for her. These things are interrelated. Love from a respectable man is more valuable than from a dirtbag, so a woman is happier being loved by a man she respects. And a man might value respect from strangers or acquintances, but it means so much more to him to be respected by the woman dearest to his heart.

Part Two of the book, called “The Energizing Cycle” (p. 115), shows a circular graphic in which his love motivates her respect, and her respect motivates his love. It’s one of those simple but not easy things about a happy life.

I’ve been following the Matt Walsh blog for a while now, and the more I read, the bigger fan I become. He wrote a piece recently titled, “I Wasn’t Ready for Marriage.” The whole thing is worth reading, but here are some highlights:

If there’s one thing about life that I wish everyone would consider — particularly my peers, and those younger than me — it’s that you’ll never do the big things if you’re waiting until you’re ready to do them.

You’ll never be ready.

You. Will. Never. Be. Ready.

You can’t possibly understand the reality of marriage — the joy, the commitment, the love, the anger, the pain, the hope, the fulfillment, the excitements, the banalities, the journey, the sacrifices, the rewards, the journey—until you’re in it. Same can be said for parenthood, only more so….

We commonly view living together as a logical step before marriage, but it isn’t. It’s something some people do, but it isn’t a step to marriage. Your marriage is defined by the commitment you make to the other person—not by the bathroom or mortgage you share. Living with someone is not a “warm up” for marriage or a “try out” period, precisely because it lacks the essential, definitive characteristic of that permanent commitment. You can’t comfortably transition into an eternal vow. You make it, and then it’s made.

Period…

In fact there is, as far as I can tell, only one form of “not ready” that should possibly stop you from walking down that aisle: immaturity. If you are prepared to dump someone you profess to “love” because they chew with their mouth open or leave wet towels on the floor, you have a maturity issue. And remember, it’s YOUR issue….

The real checklist ought to have only four items.

Do I love this person? Can I trust this person? Can they trust me? Do I have the maturity and strength to give myself to this person, and to serve this person, every day for the rest of my life?

I can’t tell you how you’ll answer those questions, but I can tell you what my answers were before I said “I do” to Alissa:

Yes, I love her, but I don’t really understand love or what it means. Yes, I trust her, but I don’t understand trust or what it means. Yes, she can trust me, but I will still come up short in ways I cannot yet predict. Yes, I have the maturity, but I still have a lot of growing to do.

And then we clasped hands and walked into that wild unknown.

Matt and his wife have only been married a few years, and fell into the wild unknown of parenthood as well, by having twins about a year ago. God bless them with long and happy lives!

If you’d like some short but valuable advice on getting the message of love through to your beloved, you could try The 5 Love Languages, by Gary Chapman. Knowing your own “love language,” as well as your spouse (there are also helps for understanding and loving your children and teens) will help you both give and receive more abundantly. The five languages are,

1.      Words of Affirmation

2.      Quality Time

3.      Receiving Gifts

4.      Acts of Service

5.      Physical Touch

One thing to remember is that you’re better off expecting to do the translating both directions. Even when the other person also believes he is doing the translating for both giving and receiving, it will still seem like you’re the one needing to do it all. Oh well. Just do what you can and accept what you can get.

Even deeper is a book called Bonds That Make Us Free, by C. Terry Warner (yet another Mormon), of The Arbinger Institute. The subtitle is Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves. It’s about more than spousal love. It’s a very disciplined approach to philosophical introspection. Wow! But it hurts the brain. You can get a daily (or so) thought by liking The Arbinger Institute on Facebook.

One last thought:

“The greatest thing you’ll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.”

—“Nature Boy,” a song performed by Nat King Cole, 1948,

written by Eden Ahbez, 1947