Simply Hard

The alarm went off at 4:50 this morning so that we could stagger to the coffee maker before joining the throngs at Fred Meyer for the Annual Sock Shop. Every year on black Friday Fred Meyer discounts all their socks by 50%. They have lots of other things on sale, too, but it's the socks that get us there. Every one of our kids counts on a years supply of socks for Christmas....probably viewed with enthusiasm equal to a father receiving a tie for Father's Day. But, whatever. Socks are expensive.
We wandered the aisles while sipping complimentary coffee and browsed the deals of the day.
"Do we need more sheets?" I asked Tim.
"Well, for $29.99 we sure do. Grab a set" says he, "did you see how cheap these pillows are?"
"Oh! Get two! Thermal beverage ware is on sale. We need more places to pour coffee!"
...and so it went. For an hour and a half. Because you never know what you need until it's on sale for a limited time.

Now it's 8 am and I've already spent the Christmas money, had my daily quota of caffeine, and spent a little time reading my new favorite bible commentator.
The commentator was talking about how very much we like to complicate things. At one point, Jesus mentions that the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love people. It's profound in its simplicity, but not remotely easy. I want to identify the rules, and know precisely which items I can check off my list. If I'm completely honest, it's often that I'm curious to find the loopholes where I may exploit a bit of wiggle room.This is the beginning of my desire to complicate. I want to Love God only if that means that I can imagine a sort of cosmic oneness that is entirely emotional. But when Jesus spoke of loving God, He seemed to have in mind a totality of surrender that I find inconvenient.
My buddy, Herschel, went on to discuss the Golden Rule and he pointed out something that I had never considered before. He says that the admonition to treat others as we would want to be treated requires that we chose to act. This becomes very thought provoking in contrast to a more widely accepted norm, which is the passive decision to do no harm. See, most people, I think, would agree that they don't want to hurt anyone. Mind your own business, and don't be mean. But that is very different from what Jesus is teaching. Jesus goes a step further by suggesting that we are to intentionally Do Good. "Love your Neighbor" requires that you look about you, see who needs love, and then you must move forward and get busy. Very different from minding your own business. In order to love other people, we must be minding their business, and this is an idea which is very much out of vogue.
How simple my life would be if I surrendered myself each day to my Creator, and actively sought to meet the needs around me.
The desire to complicate matters led the fellow in Scripture to ask Jesus to identify, precisely, whom he needed to be nice to. Jesus blew up any ideas of racial prejudice with a little story we know as The Good Samaritan. The point being that there is no one I get to ignore.
Simple. And very, very hard.