Side effects

Earlier this week I spent the noon hour playing basketball. I caught up with a group of guys that I used to play with regularly. I was a step slow and a bit out of shape. This was frustrating but understandable given how little I have played lately. Of course, most of the guys had not taken the time off so they were conditioned and enthusiastic about the competition.

In the midst of this, I found myself in a conflict with the guy that was guarding me. I got knocked down a couple of times and the frustration started working on my composure. I ended up saying some things that were regrettable to say the least. Part of this was due to getting knocked to the floor by a guy who was playing a curious style of defense. Even so, my comments were inexcusable.

The experience put a sour tasted in my mouth that lasted the day. I had gone to enjoy the company of friends and get some physical exercise but it turned out to be more an exercise in how to ruin your day. As I drove home, I really couldn't even explain why I lost my composure. I knew the guys I was playing with. I knew that some of them had some annoying habits that got on my nerves from time to time. I really had no reason to let it get to me like it did. When I went to bed that night, I was still bothered. I thought about getting up and phoning in an apology for my actions but I it was eleven 0'clock so I decided it could wait until the next day.

The following day, my wife told me about a study that had looked into how the economic downturn is impacting our health. Initially, I greeted her news with my usual suspicion. Of course, someone's out there doing a study on something like this. But then I remembered my actions from the day before. Not that I would attribute acting like an ass to the decline in the stock market but I think that there probably is a more general connection.

We have lots of things going on in our lives. We have lots of people to deal with on a daily basis. There are any number of factors that are capable of sabotaging our spirits on any given day. There is really no getting around this. And there are certainly many things well beyond our control. But at the same time, knowing this or anticipating how these things might work on us might help us keep them from creeping into places where they don't belong.

I was recently asked by a person in the parish to speak to issue of "staying in love with God." I was a little intimidated by the question, especially because it came during the same week as this story that I just shared. Following is my response to the question.

Love is a word that gets tossed about a good bit in our society—sometimes too casually, sometimes too seriously. When I think of staying in love with God, I think of maintaining an appropriate posture of gratitude and wonder. I think we need to work at this much like we need to work at our marriages. It is very easy to take for granted the people who are the closest to us. This is really abusive but it is common. It is just easy to take our spouses for granted because we expect them to always be there. I sense that it is the same with God. Take giving for example, many people pay God last. That is, they figure out their offering after they have paid their bills, taxes, IRA and even their credit cards. God gets not the first fruits but some percentage of the leftovers. Imagine being treated this way by your husband or your wife—and sometimes we are. That is, at the end of the day we get whatever is left and it is often not all that much.

So I think staying in love with God means attending to God first. Maybe this means just a small prayer at the beginning and the end of the day. Maybe it means giving something of ourselves when we would really like to just take a nap. The book of Micah has a very revealing reference to our relationship with God. Basically, the prophet asks, “what does God want from us?” Another way of putting this might be “How can we best love God?” Here is the reading:

6‘With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
7Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?’
8He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6:6-8)

In other words, the measure of our love for God is very much tied to the way that we treat other people. Jesus makes a similar point when he asks the lawyer about the greatest commandment. The writer of 1 John puts it this way:

We love because he first loved us. 20Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. 21The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also. (1 John 4:19-21)

So one of the ways that we stay in love with God is by trying to maintain authentic and peaceful relations with the people around us. Sometimes we don’t feel caring and peaceful. This is normal and o.k. to a degree but after a while we usually start feeling pretty lousy inside and it is hard to pray when all you can think about is some stupid thing you said to somebody that day. So if we are paying attention, we can try to right that wrong and I think that this, in turn, helps honor our love for God