This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
1 John 3:16-17, NIV
In the months leading up to my brother’s birth, my pregnant mother discovered an abnormal lump beneath her skin while taking a shower. The young woman, only 26 at the time, was ecstatic to be bearing the second of what she hoped would be many children. She’d always wanted a big family, especially boys. Baseball was a huge part of her life, and she often said she wanted enough boys to have a starting lineup. She met my father after divorcing her first husband mere months into their marriage when she discovered he was adamantly against having children. Soon she and my father began dating, married, and I became the first of what she hoped would be her very own ball team.
Excitement over my brother’s birth was genuine, and my mother was so proud to be well on her way to her dream of a houseful of boys. However, she soon faced the medical realities she’d put on hold during her pregnancy, and it was discovered that a malignant cancer had begun to spread within her body. Surgeries and chemo-therapy and radiation treatments often kept her away from her young family. Side-effects from medication and treatments left her a shell of the woman, and mother, she’d once been. Tired, weak, and overcome with illness, she left my brother and I, as well as the rest of this world, one ironically beautiful August afternoon. I was ten years old. My brother was only six.
While she was on this earth, my mother loved her sons more than anything; as much as any mother could ever love a child. Once she had died, I don’t remember thinking much about how she still loved us. It seemed, at least in the most literal sense, that love was an active thing that someone couldn’t ‘do’ from beyond the grave. I certainly loved my mother. My brother did to. And we still do, even though she’s not with us in the flesh. Yet, I think we’d both be lying if we said we loved her the same way as when she was present with us.
It’s true that Christians often place much emphasis on where they’ll go once they die. It’s also true that a person really doesn’t know what they have until the thing is gone. We can call this a ‘lack of appreciation’ for what we have; we deride others for ‘taking something for granted’ while they had it, as if any one of us would act any differently if we were the ones in possession of a great treasure. The truth is we are all intimately aware of what love is. What we don’t have is any realization that the love we feel for a thing is such a powerful love until the thing is gone.
The people Jesus’ Apostles preach and write to had just missed Jesus in the flesh. The Apostles, on the other hand, are men and women who can remember eating meals at table with the living Jesus, before any mock-trial or torture or execution. These are the folks who walked along dusty roads for miles ministering to countless strangers with Jesus during his earthly ministry. They witnessed the death. They witnessed the empty grave. They met the resurrected Jesus and ate with him again. However, they shared amazing stories of unbelievable acts of healing and teaching, miracles and mysteries to a crowd of people who were not there to witness these things for themselves. The Apostles knew Jesus intimately, and they knew he would return, but they must have missed him more than ever when they begin to recount his life to others. They tell the stories of the awful way he died, but only to reach the point of describing the resurrection. What they really share the most with new followers are the lessons, the teachings, the healing, the power of love that Jesus shared with them. Jesus taught through love: feeding the hungry, healing the sick and wounded, rescuing the lost. Jesus taught by example that the Kingdom of Heaven was a haven of love built on self-sacrifice. Jesus taught that a life laid down in love is the point - not the death, but the life and the legacy of love.
Ignoring others in need of the resources you hold tightly in your own hand is a sin. Laying down your life for someone happens daily. It’s not about dying so that someone else might learn some amazing lesson about morality or mortality, it’s about serving up the best of yourself for others’ benefit daily that they may learn to do the same for others still. The truth is we are all intimately aware of what it takes to love. What we don’t have is the realization that we ignore God’s call by not showing love every chance we have while we are still able.
One recurring dream I have had for years involves a conversation I never actually had with my mother before she died. It’s likely we never had the conversation because I was only ten years old when she died, and I began having this dream years later when I’d matured to an age and stage where this conversation would make sense. In the dream, I am able to forgive my mother. I forgive her for being sick. I forgive her for spending so much time in treatments and with her medical team away from me. I forgive her for dying and leaving my brother and me. In the dream, she apologizes for all these things and more. The problem I have in my waking hours with this dream is that I shouldn’t need or desire an apology, and I shouldn’t be holding onto anything I need to forgive my mother for thirty years after her death. Though she couldn’t help the timing or the way she had to die, she absolutely laid down her life for my brother and I for the few short years we had with her. This didn’t happen when the cancer finally won it’s victory over her body. She laid her life down for us every time she fixed us a meal, offered a hug, or tucked us into bed. She laid her life down while she still had life to give. Sacrifice isn’t what happens when someone dies; yet often it’s what we realize and miss the most about someone only after they die.
It’s not just enough to hang out at the cemetery and miss my mom, just as it wouldn’t be enough for the Apostles of the early church to hang out on Golgotha and be miserable. We must appreciate the sacrifices of those in our lives daily, and show that appreciation for the depth of the love that is poured out by our family and friends for each of us while we have the chance. We must then be inspired to serve others in the same ways we are served. The time to appreciate someone is both while they are still with us and in every way we remind the world around us of their legacy of love.
In Christ,
J.M.D.
P.S. - I never learned what my mother’s favorite scripture or hymn was. I think I was probably too young to know to ask while she was still with us. I do know, however, that her favorite band was Foreigner. See if that helps the title of this post make a little more sense; when I read 1 John 3:16, I can’t help thinking about my mom.
Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
1 John 3:18, NIV