I was just thinking this morning in church (brief mental tangent from the sermon) , "How often do we go into relationships trying to get something out of it for ourselves?"
Take, for example, these lyrics from the movie Aladdin:
Mister Aladdin, sir
What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order
Jot it down
You ain't never had a friend like me
No no no
Life is your restaurant
And I'm your maitre d'
C'mon whisper what it is you want
You ain't never had a friend like me
THAT's what friends are for? Okay, so I know that's a little overly simplistic. BUT, who doesn't view God or our friends in terms of what we can get out of them.
Oh yeah, this is what got me thinking about this stuff this morning: Manny compared the way we look at relationships to the "Frog Prince," or "Beauty and the Beast." In other words, "You feel ugly and unsuccessful, and you're waiting for someone to come kiss you -- then you know that somebody cares and you're not trash anymore." OUCH!
I don't have much in the way of profound thoughts on this, so I'll just add a few verses to contrast this mentality ... hopefully they are as much of a challenge to you as they are to me. I'm praying that I will view my friendships less and less in terms of what I get out of them, and more and more in terms of how I can be Christ to them, especially when I don't feel like it!
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.
John 13:34 "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Galatians 5:22-26 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.
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1 comment:
Thanks you for the incisive reflections Molly. It really is so easy for me to treat life like a big buffet and forget that I'm supposed to be one of the servers, not a customer. And the sad thing is that while I know that intuitively, it's usually a lot harder to come up with clear-cut examples of my own selfishness.
--Justin D
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