Looking Out for Number 6,856,559,598

I wonder when it starts to flipflop. When we were children in Sunday school, we learned the lessons – Jesus loves me, do unto others as you would like for them to do to you, share, be kind, and don’t talk back. (I’m not sure that the last one is word for word Biblical except for honor your parents and respect those in authority, but we really heard it a lot.) And we got it! If you treated other people with kindness, they would do the same for you. And the world seemed right-side-up.

Then we went out to play and got chosen last in dodge ball. And we started to look at how our brothers and sisters and the neighborhood kids were faring. And we began to wonder if we had it as good as they did. Were we getting everything we needed? We entered school and our horizons broadened and we began to wonder “am I getting mine?” And slowly it began to tip.

Because this upside-down living that Jesus asks from us is often more about us than it is about Him. Let me explain.

I’ve mentioned John 3:30 before: “He must become greater; I must become less.” Jesus’ first and greatest commandment in Matthew, Mark and Luke is, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) This one we know and we don’t argue with it! We struggle and forget and ask forgiveness, but it is there in our minds as something important and we completely agree with it.

The second commandment of Jesus is where we begin to war with the world. “The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’” (Mark 12:31) As myself? Are you kidding? I mean, I do love my family that much and I have friends, good friends, and well, most of the people I know from church. I love all of them and, most of the time, I am good to them and sometimes I think I love them as myself.

But really, that lady at the store that looks at me funny? Love her as much as myself? And the guy who cut me off in traffic and then lowered his window to scream at me? And the neighbor who keeps asking me to come over and help her decide where to move her shrubs?

And this thing is two-pronged! Not only am I supposed to love those people as much as I do myself (and they’re not that loveable), I'm also not supposed to care about what the world tells me is so important.

But the Home and Garden network is telling me that I’m supposed to care more about how my house is decorated! And Bravo is telling me that I am going to have to have a heap more money if I plan to be one of the Housewives of Clarendon County. Don’t you sometimes want to just scream at the world “am I invisible here?” All I have to do is turn on any tv channel and watch for fifteen minutes and it’s obvious I’m not measuring up.

The saying goes, “Jesus first, everybody else second (just so you know, that’s where the huge number came from), me third.” As I said, most of us don’t have a problem with the Jesus first concept. We get it and we try to do it. It’s the “everybody else second" piece of it that challenges us. Because the world says that if we aren’t looking out for ourselves, if we aren’t obsessed with how we look and what we have, we don’t belong.

If we follow Jesus in His commandment, we honestly are not of this world and we will never be completely comfortable here. But that has nothing to do with feeling at peace here. When I am wrapped up in “am I getting everything that is due me,” I am headed down a road that will leave me unsatisfied. But when I am concerned more with how to love someone else, I have the mind of Jesus and He is the Prince of Peace.

John 14:27
Peace I leave you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.