I. Laid. Sod.

Yup, all by myself. This girl, right here. I did a good job, too! My husband could not get over how great it looked…oh he of little faith.

And then I went on summer vacation…In Houston, Texas…With a broken sprinkler system…For 2 weeks. Upon my return, I found mostly dry, yellow straw where my gorgeous, green grass used to live.  Needless to say, I was heartbroken.  I had been defeated.  Consequently, I surrendered my efforts and gave up on my once-beautiful (and nearly-professional!) lawn job.  My grass had stopped growing, but my indifference was sprouting up like a weed!

I no longer cared for my sod.  I stopped watering it even though I knew that I might have been able to save it with just a little love. But, I refused to love it.  I stopped checking on it all together.  I even went so far as avoid that part of the yard.  It’s not that I was angry or upset with the sod, I mean come on, it is just sod.  The reality was that I just didn’t care anymore.  I destroyed what was left of my sod by separating it from myself.  It had died because I had stopped loving it.  I didn’t “do” anything to destroy it, I just stopped caring for it.  My indifference caused it’s destruction.

You see, you don’t have to hate something to destroy it.  The opposite of love is not hate…  It’s indifference!  Love creates, but indifference destroys.  A simple and often justified attitude of indifference can bring unintentional consequences into our lives.  I didn’t kill the sod by hating it…  I killed it by no longer caring for it.

Love is an action.  Love is a verb.  It creates and sustains, that’s what love does.

1 John 4:8 tells us that, “The one who does not love, does not know God, for God is love.” 

God is not indifferent. God is love!  Love must create and God is the creator of the universe.  He created us and He sustains out of His love.  The fact that we exist is simply an expression of God’s greatest moral attribute… Love!

This is why you and I were made, as an expression of God’s love, because if God is love and love must create, then God must create.  Saint Theresa of Avila said, in her work Way of Perfection, “The primary purpose of creation is that God wishes to bestow love and teach love, so that creatures can share in the blessedness of divine life, of loving and being loved.”

Isn’t that an awesome concept?  God had to create us.  He didn’t have a choice!  God is love and love must create… Wow!  God wants us to know Him and experience His love.  He desires to have a personal, intimate and loving relationship with us.  Through our personal relationships with Him, He uses us as the primary agents, so that, through us, His love might be carried to others.  This is why it is so important that we not let indifference and complacency take root in our lives.  We must weed it out!  Our love should always be in motion, always doing, always creating.  The same way that my indifference destroyed my sod, our indifference towards God can destroy our lives and rob our joy.  If we are not actively imitating God’s love then we are not in fellowship with Him.  If we are not in fellowship with Him, We… Will… Die!  It’s that simple.  But, God is love, He is not indifferent and He wants us to prosper spiritually while on this earth.  Ultimately, He created us so that one day we might live in eternal fellowship with Him in Heaven.  God’s Word assures us of His promise…

Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the Word of our God endures forever.

Guest Blogger Ali Martin

This morning I got on the scale for the first time in…well…a while. I’ve been telling myself that I need to do it for quite some time and frankly…I just did not want to know. It is the same thing I did last week when I wanted to cancel an appointment at the dermatologist where I was to get a full body screening for skin cancer because…I just didn’t want to know.  Everyone puts stuff off because we don’t want to know how it will change our lives and we don’t want the accountability. Continue reading →

Usually it doesn’t take much for me to get motivated: the smell of coffee motivates me to buy a venti-upside-down-decaf caramel macchiato, a rainy day motivates me to clean my house (yah, this is weird), and least I forget, an extra 40%-off-the-whole store sale at Chico’s motivates me to go shopping! (Okay, too much motivation). But my point is that sometimes our motivation to shop, eat, and work is rather simple.  Continue reading →

Recently, my two boys and I visited my sisters lake cottage.  I was excited to show my boys what a trip to the lake was all about since this is something I frequently got to do as a child. Being that my children are newly 4 and almost 2 and do not know how to swim, I strapped on their life jackets as soon as we got out of the car.

After a high-speed boat ride, given by my adrenaline-junkie-brother-in-law, we decided to take all the kids to the giant water trampoline anchored to the floor of the lake in front of their cottage.  The kids loved it!  They were jumping around having a fantastic time while Mommy tried to keep them from flying off the side into the water.

Believe the impossible!

It’s easier said than done. I tend to keep my heart guarded – afraid to pray big because of silent fear. Afraid to challenge myself, afraid to really listen to God, afraid that He might take me someplace and . . . . I fail. Not because of His inadequacies but because of my sin tendencies.  It’s comfortable and safe to do the same secure thing. 

Too much little faith God! Please teach me. Continue reading →

When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, “Do you wish to get well?” John 5:6 (NASB)

A man was paralyzed and sick for thirty eight years. In John chapter 5 (John 5:2-9), it says he would lay by the pool called Bethesda and watch as hundreds of blind, sick, and lame people went into the water sick and came out healed. This man desperately longed for someone to carry him into the stirring waters so he too could be healed. Lying by the pool one day, Jesus saw him and asked, “Do you want to be healed?” Continue reading →