In the Zone

I'm an older brother. I often say, as an older brother, it's not always fair to be first. I had to ride a bus to school every day until my senior year. My younger brother rode to school in cars since his freshman year. Everything I received my brother received three years earlier. (I am three years older.) At the same time, it was never fair for him either. He constantly got compared to his older brother - in terms of behavior, education and abilities. It wasn't fair that I set standards he had to meet or exceed. It was a double-standard for both us. He was expected to resemble me and I was expected to be the trailblazer for his opportunities. Whether we like it or not, double standards exist everywhere. This is most prevalent in our double standard when it comes to promiscuity and sex before marriage. As a society, we glorify males for their sexual conquests. At the same time, we expect our females to maintain chastity at all costs. If a guy sleeps around, he...

Love is a many-splendored thing.  Love lifts us where we belong.  All you need is love.  Love will find a way.  Love is a battlefield. Just surveying popular music over the past few decades and you'll see quite a diverse definition of love.  If we sampled movies, we'd have just a diverse a definition. For some, love is about conquest - claiming that person as your prize.  For others, it's about connection - finding someone with whom you can spend all your time.  For yet others, it's about compansionship - someone you can share your life and moments with as you grow older. The problem is we have a lot of definitions about love.  One issue that crops up is the English language.  We have one word for love.  We love God, our car, our house, our spouse, our friends, our moms and our favorite sports teams.  Love, love, love, love, love. The Greek language had four major words for love:  Stergo, which connated love for parents...

I like the band Pearl Jam.  Maybe not the later stuff, but I love their earlier albums.  When I was in high school, they were exploding onto the scene.  Their music is raw and powerful and poignant. They have one song that I really like.  It's called Betterman.  It's a bit slower and it's about a woman in an abusive relationship.  The point of the song (and the reason it's titled Betterman) is that she keeps saying she can't find a better man than him, so she keeps going back.  She has Battered-wife syndrome.  She's abused but dependent.  In the song, the words beg her to run away, but in the end, we know she'll go back because she can't find a better man. It's a sad reality for some relationships in our society.  People are abused and choose to stay out of loyalty, love or co-dependence.  It becomes difficult to break the cycle. This past Wednesday, we studied the relationship of Samson and Delilah found in Judges 16.  If...

It's amazing how quickly we lose patience. Fifteen years ago, if someone didn't call you back for a few hours, that was OK.  You had to wait until they came home from work or school, checked their messages and then called you back.  Now, if someone doesn't text us back in five minutes, we're calling or texting again. Thirty years ago, you reheated leftovers on the stove.  I might take 40 minutes to get leftovers back on the table.  Now, with microwaves, if dinner (especially leftovers) isn't ready in five minutes, we start getting antsy. Most of us get uneasy when moving from 3G (or 4G if you're fortunate) to E coverage on our cell phones.  (We can't even load Facebook or Twitter on E, or at least not very fast.) Yet, patience is one of the fruits of the spirit.  It's something we should strive for and practice.  All good things come to those who wait.  I could spout cliche after cliche about patience.  The truth is, especially now, v...