When I was young I didn’t have many friends. He had enough friends, but not many of them. For many years I secretly wished to have more friends, to be more popular, to have more people like me. But it was then that “he thought like a child, reasoned like a child” (1 Corinthians 13:11). Fortunately, I grew up. As the apostle Paul testified, “I became a man and left behind childish customs” (IBID).
Not everyone grows up, you know. some just get old. Aging is imposed; maturity is a choice. When I became a man, a Christian man, I began to really mature. I began to follow the One who called me “friend”, and the path we have traveled is one that leads to maturity. We keep walking; I am still maturing. I do not arrive! Still, something happened along the way, something of profound importance happened to me.
As profound as it was, I can’t tell you when it happened. I suppose it happened while my eyes were “fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith” (Hebrews 12: 2). Somehow, somewhere, sometime along the way, my orientation towards life changed. I stopped seeing myself in the center of the universe with everything revolving around me and everything revolving on me. Walking more with Christ, I finally realized that neither the others nor even the “center of the universe” was the true Center. Rather, the One who made the universe was the legitimate center, the legitimate focus of my life, of our lives.
While living this way, I stopped trying to make friends. I started seriously trying to be a friend. I stopped hoping to win more friends numerically; I began to try to deepen the friendships I had. That is, I began to care more deeply about others, or I said in another way: love others better.
In my immaturity, my orientation was completely self-centered. My concern was, “How well are they loving me?” Even more deeply, I worried that I could never be loved as deeply as I wanted. However, as maturity has grown in me, I have been motivated by this concern: “How well am I loving?” And sometimes, in full meditation before my Master, I wonder if I will ever love as deeply as I should. And he has assured me that he will “accomplish the work that he has begun in me” (Philippians 1: 6).
Many years ago God made me stop for a moment and look around my life. I wanted him to see something in particular. I saw a lot of friends, people who really mattered to me and who really cared about me. It was amazing the first time I saw it; I have marveled at the view many times since then. As pleasant as that experience is, it is not my normal orientation to look at that. As faithfully as I can, I am living from the inside out, engaging with the world before me, not living as someone looking in a mirror to see myself (where you could even be in that reflection as well).
I don’t want to leave the impression that being based on God’s love for me, living with passion to be a friend, truly loving others, has made me immune to rejection or pain in relationships with people. Does not have. However, he has made these experiences bearable and, so far, the worst of them, that he can survive. Nor do I want to leave the impression that I will never return to life centered on myself. I have done it many times. But this I know, that’s not the way I was made to live. By God’s grace, I have continued to regain my senses and live in harmony with God and His plan for my life: a God-centered life.
Nowhere in the Bible have I found the command to go out and find love or find someone who loves me. It tells us that we are loved by the One who matters most; and then he tells us to go love others. According to Jesus, the two most important commandments, which he considered inseparable and which he proposed were an adequate summary of the entire message of the Bible, were these: we must love the Lord God with all our being and love our neighbor as ourselves. (Matthew 22: 37-40). This is not natural. We, by nature, operate the exact opposite of this. God is not our starting point; our neighbors are. And we are not trying to love our neighbor; we are trying to be loved. Furthermore, until we see this, and see it as wrong, we cannot turn away from it.
In the 800 or so words you just read, there is potential hope and direction for living your life well. Jesus did not pretend to be a mere spiritual addition to our lives; He became our lives (see Colossians 3: 2-4). Do you need to change that orientation? Do you need to start seriously following Jesus, our Friend closer than a brother? He is still extending His great invitation: “Come, follow me!” Remember, please, it is a journey of maturity! Everything will change when you really follow it. You will change!
Note: All scripture quotes are from the New International Version.
