"I'll Love You Forever"
We read I'll Love You Forever to our sons when they were growing up. We made up our own tune to the song, "I'll love you forever, I'll like you for always, as long as I'm living, my baby you'll be."
It's hard to remember those days in the rocking chair, reading it over and over to them, without getting tearful.
It turns out that many people can relate. The book's author, Robert Munsch, reports that it has sold 15,000,000 copies. His publisher didn't want to publish it because it didn't seem like a traditional children's book.
If just reading the title gets you choked up with personal memories, you may not want to read the true story behind the book. Munsch says that the song came first:
I made that up after my wife and I had two babies born dead. The song
was my song to my dead babies. For a long time I had it in my head and
I couldn’t even sing it because every time I tried to sing it I cried. It was
very strange having a song in my head that I couldn’t sing (ibid.).
He later built a story around the song, and the rest is history for millions of parents and their children. I imagine Gary, Dale, and Carl would tell you this is their favorite book from childhood. It's certainly ours.
Isn't it interesting that such a beautiful, intense love story surrounds something so heartbreaking and tragic? Out of the author's pain and sorrow, this incredible, enduring legacy was created. Knowing the backstory only intensifies the power of the words in the book.
Have you ever looked at the story of the cross in that light? From the first page to the last, Scripture teaches us that God loves us, His children. He cares for us, protects us, and wants us to live with Him forever.
But there is a backstory. In fact, it goes back to eternity. There, the Godhead made a plan to make sure we could live with Him forever. But it would require His Son dying for us in order to make it happen. Discovering that should melt our hearts. What love! It's a forever love, one that can make us the best we could ever be.
Here is God's message throughout Scripture: "I have loved you with an everlasting love; Therefore I have drawn you with lovingkindness" (Jeremiah 31:3). In other words, "I'll love you forever."
Real Men ... Love
I Corinthians 16:13 says, "Be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong." Such a manly verse! "Be on the alert!" Manly! "Stand firm!" Manly! I especially love the second half of the verse. "Act like men." Of course, that is manly. "Be strong" Manly! You can almost hear Tim "The Toolman Taylor" grunting!
So how did the inspired writer qualify his exhortation? This way: "Let all that you do be done in love" (I Cor. 16:14).
Wow! Act like men. Be strong, yes. Let all you do be done in love? Manly? You see, there are many who think of meekness and compassion as signs of weakness. The Bible suggests otherwise.
Men, do you want to be a manly husband? Show your wife you love her.
Do you want to be a manly father? Show your children you love them.
Do you want to be thought of as a manly man around town? Show your neighbors you love them.
Do you want to be considered a manly man at work? Show your co-workers you love them.
Do you want to be the big man on campus? Show your classmates you love them.
See, if we are going to really be a manly man, you have to be transformed into the image of the One who created you, and God is love.
A real man shows love.
"You then, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:1).
Go In Peace?
Did you know that major cities across the country hand out thousands of free one-way bus tickets to the homeless every year? It's called the Homeless Relocation Program. Its purpose is to ship "the problem" somewhere else. Click the link to source above for the 18-month nationwide investigation by the Guardian, which looks into what happens to these people at the end of their journey.
God brings needy people into our lives to give us the opportunity to grow in our faith. To take advantage of these opportunities, we must resist the temptation to pass them on to someone else. The Christian faith is nothing, if not a call to action. James wrote, "Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, "[Here's a bus ticket] Go in peace; keep warm and well fed," but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:15-17).