Spiritual Sunday - Rules

In today's Gospel Lesson at church, we learned that:

We have no clue to what real life in Christ Jesus means. We usually live in the gray space of grace or in the black and white of rules, the monochrome world of the Law. Why? Because that tends to be where we are most comfortable in life. We want to see and achieve the standards of life. We are ready to defend ourselves quickly by saying things like: "Since when is that in my job description?" or "That's not my responsibility!". We get it into our heads that if we follow all of the rules, we'll be rewarded in the end, that if we cover all the bases, no one will be able to criticize us. Rules - even the rules of God - will never really bring life, peace, joy, strength, or courage.

At first, I sat in disbelief looking at the pastor. Then I realized that Jesus looked beyond the rules, beyond the mistaken understanding that we need rules to find his love. We don't. Jesus loves us as we are. He looks beyond our imperfections, beyond our sin, beyond our vanity. Instead of following rules, He wants us to live abundantly in the wonder of His love.

Last night I finally decided I was ready to watch the movie "Marley and Me". I could never do it before. We had a Marley - he was named Snowball. The memories of Snowball's last day when he allowed us to put him down were still too fresh after 11 years. Watching the movie, I was reminded of all the memories of Snowball over the years. He was Marley to the tee, only smaller and he never ate our furniture. The beagle in him had him howling whenever we played the piano or flute or trumpet or saxophone. Instead of seeing the 13 wonderful years Snowball gave us, I focused on that last day when we lost him. With the movie, I was able to open up to fully encompass Snowball's gift to us and through that, how we lived in God's love. It's the small things in life that show us how God loves us. How lucky we are!

The above picture is of Snowball playing in the snow which he absolutely adored!