I saw this couple on the day we were leaving KL to go on to Pangkor Island for debrief! As I was walking past them, the old man smiled with such a big smile and greeted me with a kind Hello! As I looked as him and his wife as they were walking, I noticed she was blind and he was leading her down the path. She was very frail and walked very slow, he was gentle and tender towards her in every step! Now, at the nearing of the end of the month I see why they were my image for Malaysia, these people are kind and tender! I enjoy the random greetings of the passers by as they smile brightly! I enjoy they daughter and sons assisting their aging parents as they are walking around the city. But, of all the people we have seen and met, I knew the couple in KL were going to be my image of Malaysia right when I saw them! They make me think of lives well lived, history, and legacies left behind! But, what is their legacy? Do they know Jesus? Will their legacy be one of LOVE? Will the story of their life die with them?
This month in Malaysia was a month of challenging me to LOVE well, LOVE differently, and to LOVE the relationship that I have with the Lord. As I told you all at the start of the race, I had a leadership position call Logistics. I found myself hiding in the busyness of that position. I would choose to do extra work, to not have to be present with the Lord, or with my team because it would be hard. I was still doing great things, but I was not where the Lord wanted me. I was choosing to perform for accolades and choosing what I wanted to do to serve the Lord. I was good at logistics and I loved it a lot! But, I love the Lord more than anything in the whole universe and I want to sit in His presence and walk in the path that He has laid out before me.
In the Christian world we talk about living in the will of the Lord, or doing things in our flesh… which all can sound pretty strange when coming from a non believers perspective. But, I want to live my life in a way that brings honor and glory to God, and their are times I choose to do things that bring glory and honor to myself. My pride and arrogance grows and I think I can do all things in my own strength. But, you see I believe in God, the God of the Universe, the one true God, the God who created everything, the God who was, is and will be. He wants us to lean into Him, trust Him, and know that He has prepared great things for us so that we can see them and give Him praise… He LOVES us so that we can LOVE so much more!
I want my life and my legacy to be one of LOVE, I want what comes out of me and from me to be a beautiful display and not a noisy gong. I want others to see the LOVE of God with in me and that my life let them know that they are LOVED so much, not only by me but by God! That’s you, reading this now, YOU yes YOU, are LOVED so much! In our crazy world, it sometimes doesn’t seem possible to be loved, but you are and I am, yes! WE ARE LOVED!! Loved tenderly as a husband leading his blind wife or fiercely like a father holding onto a daughter during the earths rattling in another earthquake attempt to destroy your family’s home.
1 Corinthians 13:
The Way of Love
13 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, I gain nothing.
4 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;[b] 6 it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8 Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.
13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13 is the legacy my grandmother Bonnie Calamon, left for me. She died in 1998, but in sunday school in the community center at our small baptist church she would teach us scriptures. This one, this is one I can still hear her voice and see her smile as she is going over it with us. LOVE NEVER ENDS!!!
