“Love the father with all you heart and with all your soul and with all you mind and with all your strength. The second is this: love your neighbor as yourself.” All! But how will I have any room to love anything or anybody else if “all” of my love is devoted to the father?
Maybe it is just the math in my genes, but sometimes I get caught up in the thought that my heart needs to be divided like a pie graph: 60% of my love can be reserved for the father, 20% for my wife, 10% for my children, 7% for my extended family, and 3% for everybody else. However, that is not what the father desires. He wants 100% of our love, and to my mind, that leaves no room for anything else!
I am so grateful that our father's math is not limited by percentages! In loving him with “all” we have, we learn to love others in the way that he designed. When we love him with “all” we have, he instructs us in how to “love our neighbors as ourselves.” Loving him with 100% still leaves 100% to be shared with everyone else!
Why have we been grateful during the past week:
1. This past Tuesday we invited students over to Shamblee's apartment to watch The Prince of Egypt. It was a fun evening! We made popcorn, ate cucumbers & apples, and socialized before and after. It was interesting trying to cram 13 of us in a small room around one television (and one computer with Chinese sub-titles), but we were all comfortable enough and everybody liked the movie. The students also had some great questions for us afterward!
2. On Saturday, all of us visited Tianjin, and spent the day with Wil & Courtney Corder. We spent most of the day just walking through the city and enjoying the company of other like-minded Americans. The highlight of the afternoon was finding the house where Eric Liddell (Olympic runner, and hero of the movie Chariots of Fire) lived and the stadium he built while he was in Tianjin.
Please continue to “think” about us:
1. We are still going though the application process for working in the United States next year. Again, we will most likely be placed somewhere on the East Coast, but the location is not as important to us as our desire to follow the Father's call. We are hoping to know more specifics in the weeks to come.
2. My Grandfather has been doing well lately. He has been home and is starting to get beck to his normal routine of woodworking and dominoes. You can be thinking about Jess' Dad as he recovers from severe back pain, and her brother Josh who just got over the flu.
3. Please continue to remember Jessie, and our little girl. We will be going to Beijing on Tuesday for our regular check-up. You can see a video of the baby's heartbeat on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/wat
Living outside the boat,
Brad
