In the previous post in this series, I talked about the importance of receiving love. It’s great and very important. When we receive this love, it changes us, and helps us to give love. We are filled to overflow with love to others!

I feel a problem with us as Christians in the West is that our faith often becomes very me-focused. It kind of becomes a feel-good, self-affirming ritual that helps keep our lives together. We perhaps stay on the receiving end, and don’t move on to giving love to others. Jesus changes from our goal into a “tool” to help us acquire the good life, the spouse we want, and the job we want. Jesus becomes an accessory to the central goals of our lives.

Jesus, however, calls us to live a God-centred and other-centred life. This is the central commandment of the law (Matthew 22:37-39) Our joy should not be found in our life-circumstances but in Him. Our joy and life is found in Jesus and serving others – in dying and giving and serving and losing what we have.

“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
– Matthew 10:39

Living this kind of life is a life of service like the life of Christ, who laid down His high and lofty position to come down as a man, and not only a man, but a slave who died the most humiliating death imaginable – that of a murderer (Philippians 2:5-11)! Jesus hung out with people who had no semblance of self-sufficiency left, people who knew they were empty and broken – the weak, the immoral, the tax collectors. These people, at least, knew they needed God! They did not pretend to be any better than they were.

Many Christians today stay in their safe bubble (and I often do, but recently I have stepped out a bit). But Jesus never strove to keep Himself safe! He did not insulate himself from the pain in the world, but instead poured Himself out and “made Himself nothing” (Philippians 2:7).

Saint Francis’ prayer is instructive in this respect:
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Our grace is not something that can be earned based on our works. In that sense I might rewrite Saint Francis’ last lines a little –
For we have been given to receive;
For we have been pardoned to pardon;
For we have died to be born to life.

Still, I love this prayer. It captures the calling of the Christian; to live a life of loving service  – in giving …  we receive.

We can know a fullness of joy in living for Him and loving others that goes beyond the happiness of this world and that found in achieving our own goals.

Of course, this does not mean we should serve to find joy, but as we serve others and love others, we will find joy!