Welcome to Sardinia!

Here are a few photos of the Board Meeting
of our Italian Charity.

Welcome to Sardinia!

Patrizia and Davide Zaccariello
Davide manages the Italian Charity
His wife Patrizia oversees the office and bookkeeping.
I have only known Davide a short while
yet it is as if we have known one another
our entire lives. An incredible human being,
and a great friend.

Colonel Doner and Joseph Spiccia (wearing cool
shades). Colonel is the creative genius behind
the our Group, Uber Fund Raiser,
and best friend. Joseph is a Board Member
of our Italian charity, business consultant
extraordinaire and for over 20 years
has been one of my dearest friends.

Sitting on Colonel's left is Wally McCall:
omni-competent business manager, and
a wonderful lady whom we affectionately
refer to as our Dorm Mother. With what she
puts up with, no doubt God has some awesome
rewards waiting for her in heaven.

Derek Hammond
He oversees all of our African Projects
He is also the Go To Guy whenever there is
a catastrophe where we want to send in aid.
And he is the greatest friend a man could ever have

View from the deck of my hotel room

Monte enjoying his friends...and Italy

Hallmarkians

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer
is a very rare and difficult thing;
it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle.
--Simone Weil

The other day I was speaking with someone who is suffering terribly with an illness. During the course of the conversation, he said, “I rarely speak of my illness because I have no desire to be a downer or a whiner. But I also hate it when my well-wishing friends begin spouting off all their spiritual bon mots.” I know what he means.

Why is it that we think saying something like, “There is always a rainbow after the storm,” is all that comforting to those who are suffering? “Riiiight,” they say to themselves, “but the pot at the end of the rainbow is going to be filled with medical bills.”

Some of the weirdest things you have ever heard are spoken in hospital rooms. It is as if you were in a room filled with people who had gotten their philosophy degrees in a Hallmark store. “Go with God and he will go with you.” “God is doing something very special in your life.” “With faith, you can take this lemon and turn it into lemonade.”

When we see someone suffering, it is the nature of love and care for us to want to do whatever we can to help alleviate the person’s pain. But what do we say, what do we do? Most of us simply say, “I am praying for you,” and then stand there in awkward silence.

Of course, True Believers do know what to say.

“Praise God…In everything give thanks.”
But St. Paul told us to weep with those who weep, didn't he?

“Chin up, brother: endure and keep marching for Jesus.”
But Stoicism is not Christian faith!

“Rebuke the devil, sister.”
One of my favorite cartoons is of a man lying in a hospital bed wearing a body cast, with a minister standing at his bedside. The caption reads, “Rebuke the devil? Reverend I am in no condition to be aggravating him!” Anyway, I remember where St. Paul kept rebuking the devil and Jesus said, “Enough, Paul: the thorn in your flesh stays.”

Friends do want to help. If they don’t then they are not friends. Of course, we don’t want to be like Job’s friends who “helped him” so much that he cried out, “Enough…will you never get enough of my flesh?”

The first thing friends need to remember is the physician’s oath: Do No Harm. This is no time to be practicing medicine or performing exploratory surgery. “Hey, I just read this great book…maybe it will help you.” “Bind it, loose it, embrace it, confess it away, blah, blah, mindless blah.” And if you are going to say the suffering is the result of sin and that they will be healed if they repent, you had better be a prophet and know the specific sin that brought on the pain. But remember this: if they repent and the suffering remains … we stone false prophets.

I think we should also respect the sufferer’s right to choose his own counselor. If they do not ask for your counsel, don’t give it. Frankly, I think we should be cautious with any advice, even if we are asked.

We should also realize that the individual who is suffering is not a case study; she is a human being. The Bible is not a computer where you punch in Problem 303 and get an answer. They don’t want to hear all the Bible verses we have memorized that relate to their suffering. Besides, while I do think the one who suffers should seek to remember that millions have suffered as they do, we should remember that every person’s suffering is unique to the individual. There are no pat answers, no one-size-fits-all remedies.

What do they want? What do they need? They want a friend who is simply there for them. We really don’t need to say all that much, other than that we love them and want to serve them in anyway possible. They don’t need any Hallmarkian philosophy. What they Do Need is for us is to offer to Be There for them.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2007

The Nature of Love: Loving Others as You Love Yourself

The biblical injunction to love others as we love ourselves has always intrigued me. If for no other reason than that it smacks down the pietistic foolishness that true spirituality has within it a great degree of self-hatred. Come to think of it, this probably explains why so many of these people hate everyone who is different from them, who disagrees with them, and who refuses to submit to their anti-godly standards of (so-called) holiness. “Thou shalt hate others as you hate yourself.”

It is one thing to believe that, “Hey, we all have clay feet, all have weaknesses, all have fears and foibles,” and then act with compassion and empathy toward others (Galatians 6). It is something else entirely to believe that we are all scum—“But of course your scum is worse than mine.” Understanding that we all wrestle with difficulties and then offering the mercy to others that we receive so generously from God, is a different mindset from one that says, “We are both despicable worms,” and then go about judging and treating others with the same harshness with which we treat ourselves.

On the other hand, there is no implicit permission here to become a narcissist. The idea is not to worship self but, rather, to consider how I am to love others. For example, just as I ethically and wisely see to it that my basic needs are met, so too will I consider the basic needs of those around me. Moreover, just as I seek God’s best for my life, so too will I then seek God’s best for others.

I think the key to staying away from narcissism is seeing that I am loved by God and have been graced by him to share that same love with others. With this understanding I then “love myself” because he first loved me and is now granting me the high calling of introducing that same love to the world around me. I am not the center of the Universe: The God Who is Love is the center.

On Loving Your Self:

It is difficult to act lovingly toward others, if I am a psychological or physical basket case.

It is almost impossible to love others, if I am under such a burden of debt that all I can do is spend every waking moment focused upon servicing that debt.

If I am not seeing to it that I am constantly aware of and grateful for God’s love for and within me, then I will not be all that aware of how I can demonstrate that love to others.

In loving myself, I take care of my needs—spiritually, psychologically, and physically. If I do not do this, if I do not care for my “self,” then I am going to be fairly bankrupt when it comes to the need for demonstrating God’s love to others.

Think of it like this:

First, there is God’s love for me.
Next, there is God’s love working within me.
Finally, there is God’s love flowing through me to others.
(Obviously there is no first-second-third, as each works along side and with the other, but it helps me make a point so don’t get distracted!)

Once I truly believe that God loves me, I will also see that he has poured out this love within me. As this becomes my reality, I begin conforming my life in its entirety to his desires for my life. Subsequently, as his love is re-creating and re-newing me, it is inevitable that this same love will begin flowing out toward others. And if it isn’t? Then I have as yet to fully grasp his love for me, and the demands that it places on my life.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2007

The Nature of Love: “Laying Down Your Life”

Loving people is not always a “pleasant experience,” for us or for those whom we love.

Jesus demonstrating his love for us by suffering and dying on the cross was not a pleasant experience for him. Nevertheless, because of his love for his father and for us, he gladly sacrificed himself. Telling the Pharisees they were a brood of vipers, because he loved them enough to speak the truth, was not a pleasant experience for the Pharisees.

Acts of love are often difficult, which is why the NT uses the metaphor of “laying your life down” as a picture of how love behaves.

Jesus gave his life for us, even though we were at war with him and running as fast as we could in the opposite direction of his open arms.

God pursues us before we are even aware of our need for him.

God’s love is freely offered and, while we may reject that love, he never ceases offering it to us.

God’s love is, at times, perceived as impotent because he refuses to force himself on us.

God’s love sometimes moves him to leave us alone, where we can discover just how deep our need for him is.

God loves us so speaks the truth-that-will-set-you-free to us…even if it makes us angry or hurts our feelings.

God’s love is not blind: it is, however, filled with grace and mercy.

Paul tells us that God’s love has been poured out into our hearts. This means that, as we learn to express and demonstrate both who and what is within us, we will increasingly find ourselves loving others as he loves us. (See Above.)

Copyright Monte E Wilson, 2007

The Nature of Love: One Love

When I was a child I thought there was only one kind of love. You love your family, you love your friends, you love your dog: love is love.

When I became a young man and read CS Lewis’ The Four Loves, he confirmed something I had begun to experience: there were all kinds of love—affection, friendship, eros, and charity.

Now that I am older, I think there is only one kind of love. O, to be sure, this love manifests itself in various ways: with a lover it is thus, with a friend it is like so, with an enemy it is like that. Nevertheless, each manifestation comes from the same source. Love gives itself in various ways, manifests itself differently from context to context, but it is always self-giving, always self-sacrificing, always about the other.

In I Corinthians 13 we read where love is primarily a behavior: it never behaves this way (rude, arrogant, etc.), and it always behaves that way (kind, believing the best, etc.).

Paul didn’t make this stuff up but learned it from Jesus. When Jesus told people to love their neighbors, he didn’t describe what sort of feelings they should have toward them but how they should behave toward them. And who is your neighbor? Anyone for whom we can do good…even if doing good requires personal sacrifice. And anyone includes your lover, your friend and your enemy.

Of course, loving our neighbor doesn’t mean we like them or even approve of their lifestyle. Loving our neighbor simply means we get about doing what we can for their sake…for love’s sake…for goodness sake…for God’s sake.

Fundamentally, love is a lifestyle, a way of living our lives. Rather than a life that is all about me, or all about my small circle of buddies, love demands that my life becomes all about sharing God’s love with others.

Copyright Monte E Wilson, 2007

The Nature of Love: How Love Behaves

What strikes me about Paul’s description of love in I Corinthians 13 is that it is all about how love behaves. There is nothing here about the subjective experiences we usually think about when speaking of the nature of love. This is not to suggest that feelings are not an ingredient of love, only that as far as Paul was concerned feelings were not the primary or defining ingredient.

Here is how love does not behave:

• It does not envy
• Doesn’t strut around saying "look at me."
• Is not prideful (“Look how loving I am.”)
• Is never rude – Love has manners: it offers itself but never forces itself.
• It is not out for itself, is not self-seeking: it never says, “What about me and my needs?”
• Doesn’t get provoked (isn’t thin-skinned), and doesn’t keep lists of wrongs suffered
• It thinks no evil, and certainly does not rejoice when evil takes place (This includes not wanting to sit around and always talk about the evil in our denomination, in that movement, or in this house.)

How does love behave?

Love suffers long, bearing all things
Love is kind
Love rejoices in the truth
Love believes the best
Love hopes the best
Love endures

Love…believes all things…hopes all things…endures all things. I think this about sums it up.

Love believes all things
Love’s first instinct is to believe others, to trust them, to trust what they are saying. This doesn’t mean that love is blind or naïve, only that it is by nature trusting rather than cynical or skeptical.

Love hopes all things
Love is positive and hopeful, big hearted and open. Love is always ready to forgive and give people a second chance. Love hopes for the best in and for others.

Love endures all things
Love perseveres. Love bears the rejection of the Prodigal, allowing him to leave and then searches the horizon everyday for his return. Love leaves the ninety-nine for the one. Love goes to the cross for the sake of others.

Why does God love us? I certainly do not think it is because we are that loveable. He loves because that is who he is. Our love must increasingly mirror the love of God. As with God’s love, we don’t base our love for others on who they are or what they do, but, rather, love because it is who we are.

copyright Monte E Wilson, 2007