Europe 2010

From the last two posts you may be able to tell that I have started a different approach to updating you all on my trip. I feel you get a better picture of what is happening here if I write about the thoughts I have been having about the spritual side of all this. That being said here are some of the things I have been thinking about in Paris.

Paris, the city of love! There is so much love in Paris. I see it everywhere I look from the locals and tourists alike. Everyone is madly in love. Sounds good, right? Well it would be good, great even, but they are not madly in love with the right thing.
I was listening to a sermon on the train ride into Paris Sunday morning and it was about when love is wrong. Really? Love? How can that be wrong? Paris was a beautiful example of this love gone wrong.

I think that because we as human beings were made in the image of God, we can't help but to love. It is our nature to love. It is something everyone of us has. But what I am finding is that while every one of us may have it, one of the main differences in people is what we love.
So, if we all have this instinct to love why is the world not one big group hug? Because we don't all love the right thing. How sad and hurtful this must be to God. What a slap in the face! He made us with this capacity to love Him and what do we do with that invaluable gift? We use it to love everything but Him. How hurtful that must be to God to see us all choose ourselves over Him. So what does He do now that we have taken this ability to love and trampled it under our feet? He sends His son to come down, pick it up off the ground and not just dust it off and hand it back to us. No! The damage was done, in order for us to get this gift back Jesus had to die. So we slap God across the face with this gift He gave us and He sends His son to die so we can get it back?That is love.
So if people are not loving God what do they love? I could list a whole number of things like power and money, but I think it all boils down to one thing: we are madly in love with ourselves! It is so engrained in our culture that we don't even realize it. I thought to myself "I'm not that good at loving myself, I am really hard on myself!" But in this sermon the preacher pointed out that the evidence of this self love we all have is found in things like making sure there is enough hot water for you in the shower, or making sure that the room temperture is how you like it and little things like that. You may not like yourself, or be nice to youself, but I would bet that you love yourself.
Sadly, this is the love displayed in Paris. During the pouring rain I watched as the people with umbrellas pushed me (without one) into the street so they could not only have the umbrella covering them, but the sidewalk covers too! This is self love. On the metro I see people pushing others back to get the last seat for themselves. This is self love. At resturants I see people weaving and cutting the line as much as they can to get their order in first. This is self love. It breaks my heart to see us all waste this capacity to love on ourselves!
But you can't really stop loving yourself, right? You can't stop taking care of youself and your well being, right? Well, to me that is irrelevant. We need to be focusing on how we CAN love God. How beautiful would the world be if we all just simply loved God? If we threw ourselves whole-heartedly into loving God with all that He gave us. If we didn't worry about not doing this or doing more of that and just dove in 100% to loving our creator! I think all the other things would fall into place. We wouldn't have to think about doing the "right thing" we would be living and breathing the right thing! We wouldn't have to worry about loving other people, that would all come naturally from our overwhelming love for God.
It's time to stop the cycle of loving anything but God. It's time to let our love from everything else come out of this overflowing love for God. So stop trying to split up your love between yourself, your family, your friends, your significant other and God, and give it ALL to God. Anything less than all you have is not enough for God. When you hand it all to God He will fill you up. Your love for all the other things will flow from your love for Him making your love for all of them pure, strong, and true. Love doesn't run out when you let God have it all.


We are in Dublin now and plan on being here until Friday and on Friday traveling around seeing the country of Ireland a little. We will be back in Dublin soon after.i can't put into words the feeling my spirit has finally being in Ireland! I have felt called here for so many years and God is faithful and has brought me here at last! What a journey it has been! God has His own agenda for this trip and I am so greatful!

Location:Paris, France