On an Excellent Life
We as Christians are given two commandments, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor. This is the standard that we have of a life well lived, how well we love God and love other people. Loving God includes, loving other people, and obeying his commands. For, “Those who love me, obey my commandments.”
The simple part is often understanding God’s commandments. Do not let improper speech come from your mouth, be kind, keep no record of wrong, and others. But applying these is difficult. Seeing the connection between a good blessed life and obeying God’s commands is more difficult, that will be the topic for my next blog post.
The second piece is loving other people. My encouragement for living a life worth living is learning to love creatively, intently, and fiercely.
Loving creatively could be hiding surprises all over some ones house, like army men, chocolates, or flowers, for someone to find. It could be leaving a recording of a love message for them to find. You could: draw their favorite activity (even if it is stick figures), compliment something no one gets complimented on, like their elbows, or make them some food. Most importantly, you should do something that points them towards Christ, because the greatest good for everyone is Christ. You can do nothing greater for a fellow person than to bring them one step closer to the creator.
Love intently. Even if you don’t feel like it. Just do it. Be intentional. Plan. Base the idea upon who the person is. Think of their struggles and their joys, connect the act of love to that. God is pleased with water for a child, and he is also pleased with a gift in love.
Love fiercely. Here I have the pleasure of a story. It would be better titled love stubbornly, but it works here.
I was hanging out with a group of friends one day and we decided to get yogurt. As the eight of us crowded into the yogurt shop, one of our friends, who we saw rarely, mentioned he would like something but had no money. When Ashley offered to pay for it, Jeremy was quick to deny the offer. The banter went back and forward for some time. “Well what if we split something?” she pushed. He finally agreed. Then the bantering continued as she tried to pick out flavors he would like. They were last in line, and when they came and sat down at our table, she took the first sweet bite. “Yum.” Then put her spoon down. “I am done”
“What?” Came Jeremy’s reply.
“Yeah, there I had a bite. We shared. You can have the rest.”
So love fiercely, stubbornly, and sometimes with just a bit of mischievousness.
Tag: life
Life Worth Living: Mischievous Love
On an Excellent Life
We as Christians are given two commandments, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and to love your neighbor. This is the standard that we have of a life well lived, how well we love God and love other people. Loving God includes, loving other people, and obeying his commands. For, “Those who love me, obey my commandments.”
The simple part is often understanding God’s commandments. Do not let improper speech come from your mouth, be kind, keep no record of wrong, and others. But applying these is difficult. Seeing the connection between a good blessed life and obeying God’s commands is more difficult, that will be the topic for my next blog post.
The second piece is loving other people. My encouragement for living a life worth living is learning to love creatively, intently, and fiercely.
Loving creatively could be hiding surprises all over some ones house, like army men, chocolates, or flowers, for someone to find. It could be leaving a recording of a love message for them to find. You could: draw their favorite activity (even if it is stick figures), compliment something no one gets complimented on, like their elbows, or make them some food. Most importantly, you should do something that points them towards Christ, because the greatest good for everyone is Christ. You can do nothing greater for a fellow person than to bring them one step closer to the creator.
Love intently. Even if you don’t feel like it. Just do it. Be intentional. Plan. Base the idea upon who the person is. Think of their struggles and their joys, connect the act of love to that. God is pleased with water for a child, and he is also pleased with a gift in love.
Love fiercely. Here I have the pleasure of a story. It would be better titled love stubbornly, but it works here.
I was hanging out with a group of friends one day and we decided to get yogurt. As the eight of us crowded into the yogurt shop, one of our friends, who we saw rarely, mentioned he would like something but had no money. When Ashley offered to pay for it, Jeremy was quick to deny the offer. The banter went back and forward for some time. “Well what if we split something?” she pushed. He finally agreed. Then the bantering continued as she tried to pick out flavors he would like. They were last in line, and when they came and sat down at our table, she took the first sweet bite. “Yum.” Then put her spoon down. “I am done”
“What?” Came Jeremy’s reply.
“Yeah, there I had a bite. We shared. You can have the rest.”
So love fiercely, stubbornly, and as I learned from one of my favorite people, sometimes with just a bit of mischievousness.
Borderlands and GenXers
Borderlands and the Broken Generation
Borderlands is the number one selling first person shooter published by 2k games. It is set apart by its cartoon graphics and the world record for most types of guns in a game, over 17750000. It also offers one of the most disappointing endings to any first person shooter ever. However, this is representative of the normal life of generation Xer.
Generation X age range from teens to those in their thirties. This generation is characterized by self-indulgent narcissism, high expectations, laziness, poorer living standards than the previous generation and broken dreams. The average 20-30 year old expects to be making 75,000 a year right out of college. The actual average income of all adults included is 52,000. They hope and expect for more, even though they believe that the world is getting worse and worse. We have been trained by Hollywood and mass media to expect a standard of living that is just not reasonable. Then when we get into the real world, our hopes are dashed as we try and fight the rats for our food in tiny disheveled apts. Or live at home till we are in our thirties.
Borderlands is about a group of treasure seekers that are looking for a mysterious vault that supposedly contains untold riches and power. You spend hours of gameplay on countless quests, doing favors, killing villains, earning new guns, and gaining pieces of the vault key. When you finally get to the final boss, which takes all of five minutes to kill, you are rewarded with weapons. Weapons that are pitiful in comparison to the ones you already have.
However, this sets up the stage for the second borderlands. There is rumor that there is a second mysterious vault still hidden on the planet of Pandora. A new set of adventurers go forth to find this vault, while interacting with the characters from the previous game. After dozens of hours of gameplay, saving lives, fighting back against Handsome Jack who wants to kill all vault hunters, and saving the world of Pandora, you are able to open this second vault; the vault finally comes with the reward of more crappy weaponry.
The game developers are pointing out that the end result of all of the efforts of pursuing our dreams and fighting for riches results is disappointment. There is no great prize at the end. There is merely the fun of the journey there. So you might as well go back through and play the game all over again, which is an important part of the game. Don’t worry about lame endings, just keep killing the psychos, and riding the meat bicycles.
Broken Crowns 