Much dreaming and many words are meaningless. Therefore fear God. – Ecclesiastes 5:7

Today's Scripture Reading (December 14, 2022): Ecclesiastes 5

A few weeks ago, I was conversing with a Christian friend. The discussion was about the rules of Christianity. His question was, "aren't there things we must do to be a Christian? And my response was yes, love and love your neighbor. Jesus said that doing that would fulfill all of the law and the prophets (Matthew 22:40, among several other places). My friend understood that but weren't there rules we had to follow first, and then love?

Again, my response was that either loving God and loving our neighbor is enough, or Jesus lied. You choose the option with which you are most comfortable. And I can say that with a smile, but there is a serious counterpoint. If Jesus is right, and I am not about to be the lead in a group arguing that Jesus is wrong, then all sin has something to do with love. And the main question when we evaluate actions that might be a sin is how does this action violate the law of love? I get it. Given a chance, I like to be a rule follower, but maybe the only consideration of which I need to be aware is how does this violate love. It is not easy because we tend to be great self-deceivers. Oh, and by the way, "it is only hurting me" isn't an excuse because a violation of loving ourselves is still a violation of the law of love.

My friend's comeback was, "so all I have to do is say that I love God and I love my neighbor?" And again, my response was, "No, you have to live it." And living it is hard. I am convinced that if we could get our love right, we could move on to other things. But living our love is a task that I think will take most of us our lifetimes to learn to do. And if God did work a miracle in our lives and we did learn to love, I suspect that all the other things just might not matter as much as we think they do from where we live right now.

Qoheleth continues his evaluation of what his society seems to believe are the essential things of living. And he comments that "much dreaming and many words are meaningless." Sometimes it looks like he is reading my mail. I am admittedly a dreamer. There are members of my church that I am not allowed to meet with without someone else present because we are both dreamers. And if someone else isn't there, we will get nothing done. It is not that there is anything wrong with dreams; we all need them. It is just that unless there is someone there to keep us accountable, the dream will never be a reality. And a dream that never becomes real is as meaningless as many words that never become actions. In reality, we don't have to say it; we must live it.

So, if you want to be a follower of Christ, don't stop saying your love, but make sure you are committing your words to actions. Because the world doesn't need to hear us speak of our love, they need to feel it.  

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 6