I had had visions of catching up on my blogging while I was on my Christmas vacation, but alas life does not always go as planned. It seems that when I was child and a young adult that I had plenty of time during the Christmas holidays to do whatever I wanted, but now that I have been blessed with a wife and a family my priorities about what is really important have changed, like blogging for example.
Blogging is fun and it is a means and medium for me to express myself to whomever cares, but blogging loses its fun, its appealing luster compared to serving my family and meeting their needs. Please do not misunderstand me though, serving my family and meeting their needs is not always fun, clean, restful, exciting, a highly praised, and a painless affair, in fact most of the time it is quite the opposite. Therefore, the question you are now asking is if serving and meeting my family’s needs is mostly unentertaining, dirty, sleepless, boring, a thankless, and a painful affair then why am I doing it…what is my motivation?
I can sum up in one word what motivates me to serve my family even when it is so unpleasant, and it is the word, “love.” Some people are primarily motivated by duty, by fear of loss, by selfishness or by some other motivation, but it is the call of sacrificial love that motivates me. It is not to say that I am always motivated purely by love, I do fall short of the glory of pure love, but my relationship with my wife and girls is based upon a calling to and a covenant made in the name of love. Daily I strive to remember my God who showed me the true meaning and depth of His love, who humbled Himself as less than God to become a man in order to serve me instead of demanding His rightful service, who came to create peace between God and man, who was willing to suffer greatly and ultimately die as the just for the unjust. It is when I remember the meaning and the depth of the love of my God that I gain the power, the strength, the pure motivation to serve and meet the needs of my family, even when my family occasionally treats me unjustly or with disrespect. For the love which God has given to me conquers all evil even when evil has tortured, raped, and taken my life for in the end God justly resurrected His son back to life again and has promised to resurrect those who are so willing to follow His son down the same path of God’s pure love.
