God’s Simple Directions for Life

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Looking over the customers in a coffee shop, you see a variety of activities going on. Some people are quietly enjoying their coffee over a book or newspaper. Others are trying to get away from the office while they accomplish something on their laptop. Still other customers have met another person to talk. You can tell when people are talking about a deep subject: they hold their coffee with both hands right below their chin, slightly leaning into each other, occasionally looking over their shoulder to see if anyone else is listening in.

A coffee shop is a great place to get together with someone and talk deeply. Perhaps we subconsciously know that the caffeine will help stimulate our thoughts, making us think more clearly than before. Maybe this is why we often meet people at a coffee shop to ponder the dilemmas life throws at us.

Life is full of dilemmas. Sometimes they seem impossible to solve: What should we do about this or that person? What if this happens? What if that doesn’t happen? What will I do if they don’t help?

Fortunately, God gives us very simple answers to our questions. Jesus has told us what his two most important commandments are (Mark 12.30-31):

‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.

These two commandments can solve any dilemma that you pose. The bottom line is that God wants us to love him and love others above everything else.

I see from your expression that you don’t believe me. You think that life is much more complicated that this. Sure, these are the two greatest commandments, but they don’t solve all our problems, you say.

I think they do. I just think that we make things more complicated than we have to. I think we make them more complicated because we are trying to get around God’s simple directions. It is not easy to love anyone in any real since. Sure we can put up with someone. We might even be able to tolerate someone, but really love them- that’s impossible. So, to get around God’s directions for us in our dilemma, we try to justify our desire to not fully love them. This way we can rest assured that we have done the right thing, even if it isn’t what God really wants out of us.

Now I might think God’s directions solve all our problems, but I don’t think it is easy to do them. How can we escape our attempts to justify our own actions and really love someone with whom are dilemma involves? We have to rest in the justification we have by faith in Jesus. Only then will we have nothing to lose by really loving the other person. Only when we are assured of our justification before God can we love- and fulfill God’s simple directions for life.