II JOHN

"And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands.  As you heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love."  (II John 1:6 - II John has no "3:16")

The apostle John wrote this short book of the Bible. the second in a series of three letters he wrote to fellow-believers to emphasize truth and love and to warn them about false teachings.  The book of II John is a letter about love.  The love of God.  The Bible is a love story; it is the most intricate, beautiful love story you will ever read.  The more you read and study it, the more details will be revealed to you. It is a love letter from God to you.



Love is what each of us wants and needs. Our world is filled with words about love - greeting cards, popular music,  magazines - they fill us with dreams of love and give us ideas of some sort of perfect romance.  But, this rarely exists.  We long for love.  We yearn to love and be loved,  but see very few examples of real love living in our world today.  Christ is the direct opposite of the world's ways, the opposite of the world's values.  Christ is the opposite of the self-centered world we live in. Believers in Him need to claim His ideals, reflecting love and acting with love toward one another.

In the book of John, the following conversation takes place, revealing just how important love is: "Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.  One of them, an expert in the law, tested Him with this question: 'Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?'  Jesus replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.' "   (Matthew 22:34-40

So, the command to walk in love is both old and new.   In the Bible the old foreshadows the new and the new reflects back to the old.  In the above quote, Jesus is referring to the book of Deuteronomy wherein God gave mankind instructions on how to live in love... the Torah and the commandments.

The apostle Paul wrote beautifully of love in his first letter to the Corinthians:

"If I speak in the tongue of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.  Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails...When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.  When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.  Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain:  faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love."  (I Corinthians 13:1-13)

Love God.  Then, love one another.  This is walking in love.

LAMENTATIONS

     '' 'He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust...Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never
fail.'"   (Lamentations 3:16. 21. 22   NIV)




      The book of Lamentations was written by Jeremiah, the "weeping prophet".  Because of his visions from God,  Jeremiah knew of the upcoming destruction of Jerusalem and of the suffering and exile of his people.  Lamentations is Jeremiah's song of grief for the souls of Jerusalem.  Still, Jeremiah's constant underlying message is that  HOPE  IS  IN  THE  LORD.

     Have you ever been so busy singing your own funeral song that you missed the chorus of hope?  Sorrow and grief are difficult to bear, but we all experience them from time to time.  Sometimes, because we are human, we may experience some of these emotions to a greater degree than necessary by over-reacting to situations or by trying to handle a problem alone. (Oh, I didn't want to bother anybody...)  Our intentions may be good, but it can lead to hopelessness.
     Hopelessness.  That's pretty much where I found myself the morning God sent me the steamin' heifer...


    It was a rough time.  I had recently been diagnosed with a chronic medical condition.  The realization had begun to sink in that I would spend the rest of my life battling pain and fatigue.  Medicines helped some of the symptoms, but caused new problems, and so on, and so on, and so on...  I was relying on a cane to walk, and couldn't go up or down stairs at all.  Me!  The practical joker, who was always hopping around, being silly, and who -only eighteen months ago - had been jogging daily. Me, the single Mom, who always had the energy to work two jobs, be Mom and Dad and housekeeper and chauffeur and still manage to bake bread or color a poster or throw a party... It didn't make sense!
  

     And it was January. And it was colder than usual for Georgia. And the holidays were over. And my daughter had gone back to college, hundreds of miles away. And I had told her of my illness.  And it hadn't gone well.
     Oh, I was grieving.  I was sorrowful.  I was so close to hopelessness.  I was driving to work on the bitter cold morning, and there was a place in my heart far more cold and bitter than that frosty January air...
     The heater in the car quit about halfway to work.  It was "the last straw". It infuriated me!  I ranted and raved. I asked, "Why? Why? WHY?!"  There I was, driving those back country roads, yelling at God. "Why,  after I've worked so hard all these years?  WHY, when I've tried to be a good person all this time?  WHY???"
  

   Y'know, God could've struck me dead for talking to Him like that.  Instead He sent me a message so clear that it was as if He was sitting in the care with me. It was three little words.  (Now, you're thinking that His three little words were, "I love you." And, I'm sure He does; but, that morning His three little words were: "You are silly."  I thought, "What?" And then I realized that my temper tantrum hadn't accomplished anything other than make me look like a fool.  As I pulled up to a stop sign I was glad no one was there to see me except for a dozen or so cows in the frosty pasture.
  

 One cow was lying down, but she stood up just as I got to the stop sign.  Because of the difference between her body temperature and the cold air, huge wafts of steam drifted off that ol' heifer, and I laughed at the sight.  And laughed. And laughed.  You see, that ol' heifer was steamin'... JUST LIKE ME.  And she looked pretty silly, which is what God had just told me.
     The funeral dirge became a song of hope. And  HOPE  IS  IN  THE  LORD, just as Jeremiah said.  One never knows what instrument He might use to change the music in one's life.  It might just be a silly song from a steamin' heifer.