Thurs., Aug. 2, 2018

Luke 10:27 – “It says,” he replied, “that you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind. And you must love your neighbor just as much as you love yourself.”

“I really don’t like rules. And I don’t like to follow them.”

Recently, our 6-year-old grandson Dylan and I were walking. His elder brother and sister were running ahead of us. Dylan turned to me and shared his wise words of wisdom for the day.

Whew. There was a whole lot of something in those two sentences.

Maybe someone has shared he must follow certain rules. He isn’t really interested in this. Enough to share this with me.

He already knows at his ripe age of 6 that rules may not be his friend.

Some people love rules. Others feel rules are torture.

In the Old Testament, we find hundreds of rules for the Chosen People to follow. Literally hundreds. Some are very specific: don’t eat pork. Others seem to protect someone or something. It is hard for us to look back at all these “rules” and see how following them is important today. Seriously. Does God really care if we have mixed fabric fibers in our clothing?

There is so much discussion about whether Christians must follow all these seemingly outdated rules or not. Honestly, don’t most of us pick and choose which of the Old Testament rules we follow?

What about the interpretation that Jesus gave? Forget all those other rules. Remember the big two: love God and love your neighbor. Honor these two and the rest will take care of the itself.

Dylan is right. Remembering a whole bunch of rules is hard. Confusing. Difficult. We end up trying to find ways to get the commandments to say what we want them say. What we are comfortable with.

Grace for us. Close rule-following for everyone else.

Dylan, sometimes I struggle with rules as well. There are times I want to shove them out the window. Other times, rules have been my friend and helped diffuse a situation.

I pray we can agree that Jesus’ set of rules are important. Let’s go live them today.

Lord God – sometimes, we think rules are only there for separation. I pray that we see rules as an opportunity to display our love for God and neighbor. Amen.

Blessings –

Dianne

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