0:00:00 - 0:00:30 Uh a bit over a week ago, my nephew passed away suddenly and it was a, a big surprise for everybody. Uh Most of all his parents, my older brother, uh his father is obviously been struggling. Um I, I, my brother and I, we we were pretty close age wise. He's the oldest uh son, the oldest child of my mother 0:00:29 - 0:00:55 . Um We obviously, we grew up in some of the same trenches uh with, with pretty, pretty similar external situations and uh I have a lot of esteem for him. He's, he's risen above a lot of the circumstances. He was handed in life, but we're not terribly close. We don't have a whole ton to talk about um 0:00:54 - 0:01:23 having, having taken very different paths in my life. Um So, um after uh another sibling, let me know that this had happened. Um I struggled to think about what I could say and uh I'll spare you that process, but I'm going to go into depth into the one from today. Uh because I think it illuminates some 0:01:23 - 0:01:41 important principles. So this is why I wrote to him, which I chose to do via text instead of calling him. Um And all of those choices, I'll just summarize were based around the greatest benefit he might be willing to receive. So I was trying to do the greatest good I could without triggering him in any 0:01:41 - 0:02:06 way into um into some sort of a negative response, which that's why I preceded this by saying that I have a great deal of esteem for my older brother because he's not a bad person. Um He uh it, it's just that we, we have a lot of different perspectives and I, I can't explain this in a way. It's gonna 0:02:05 - 0:02:27 sound good, but we're good like we're good. Um And, and it, it's just that, that there's a lot that if I were to just blurt it out, it'd be too much, it'd be too much so and it wouldn't be taken in the right way and that's not a fault of his. It's just where, where we both are and you probably understand 0:02:26 - 0:02:51 it's, it's life. OK? So this is what I wrote to him. I said life is designed to present situations that reveal to us challenges beyond what we think we can bear. That would be beyond the power of words to, to adequately address I've carried enough to learn that there is sense in the senseless strength 0:02:50 - 0:03:18 in overwhelming inadequacy and light in the darkness. No matter how it might seem, you are not alone. Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you. And he replied just by saying, thank you. So, here we are. Um sometime later and I was thinking about him a lot this morning and I was trying 0:03:17 - 0:03:54 to find a connection between uh the love that I feel for him and what he might be able to receive. So um as I started this, my, my heart just expanded as why is eternity so to speak. And um as I was querying the Lord on, on what might be helpful for him, what came to my mind was saying something like 0:03:53 - 0:04:27 sometimes when um when we get hit with terrible surprises in life, they can be very helpful in exposing us to problems we didn't realize existed or uh inadequacies in our beliefs or limitations to our strength. In other words, they, they are valuable to suggest to us changes in how we are, uh how we 0:04:27 - 0:05:03 think, how we believe and how we act so that we can be uh better prepared to contend with the difficulties that are ever present in life, even if they seem to be less intense or common than they actually are something like that. And um that response would have demonstrated the greatest love that I could 0:05:03 - 0:05:31 think of because it contained in it, the gr the seeds of the greatest improvement, the greatest possible benefit he could extract as far as I know from this situation. Um But I didn't write that up and send it and the reason is because I thought he wouldn't take it that way. He'd take it as being preachy 0:05:30 - 0:05:55 or, um, and minimizing his pain somehow because the assumption of all people is that when they're in intense suffering that it's, there's no way anyone else could possibly know what they're going through. Now, this is most harmful in our relationship with God. And there are many people who, when they 0:05:54 - 0:06:21 suffer anything that's, uh, towards the top of their experience, they immediately presume that there's no way God could have any idea what they're going through. Of course, that's completely false. He suffered more than anyone can. So, um because they don't believe that he could have done that, they 0:06:21 - 0:06:57 don't find comfort in the fact that he did. This is true in cascading examples down to wherever we stand. And um it's unfortunate because the costs to know these things to say them and to be able to say them sincerely is incredibly great. And even that even that um supports the idea that the person who 0:06:56 - 0:07:17 says it has gone through worse because it, that's what it would take to be able to say such a thing. Now, unfortunately, these sorts of things, they occur against the backdrop of a lot of people speaking beyond their experience. And that is definitely the norm, both in content and confidence, people 0:07:17 - 0:07:52 exceed their experience. That's the norm um in, in what they say. So that's unfortunate. But uh there are times when it's true and it, it's very powerful to ask yourself, what would it take for someone to say what he or she just did in full sincerity and confidence? So I didn't say that. Um So I pivoted 0:07:51 - 0:08:19 and I said, ok, let me, let me pack up this love and see if I can take it down a notch and find uh find a window that's capable of receipt or find a, find an expression that's capable of fitting in the window that's presented here. So then I thought, ok, what can I say? That's not going to advise any 0:08:19 - 0:08:42 change? Because that's really the rub if you, the greatest help you can give is to give someone a new option that they weren't thinking about or to give them better reasons to consider a better option than they would have chosen. That is the greatest love you can give. So downshifting, perhaps the next 0:08:42 - 0:09:03 best thing you could do is show them that uh that you care much more than they might think. And I thought, well, because you have to say what's true. If you're going to be sincere, it's not like you're just sort of, I don't know, writing a story and you get to pick whatever you want to say, you have 0:09:03 - 0:09:33 to choose from the options of what would be true as far as you understand. So for me, um I, I came up with um the thought, well, um I would literally do anything I could if it would somehow save him from having to go through this. So I thought of writing something like, um, I'm so sorry for what you're 0:09:33 - 0:09:55 going through. If there is some way that I could go through it to spare you from it. I would. So people say things all the time like, oh, just so, you know, I care or thinking of you or whatever and ok, fine, like maybe you were thinking about the baseball game three minutes ago, who cares that you're 0:09:55 - 0:10:24 thinking of me? But um to make a quantifiable statement about how much you care that requires you to suffer, right requires you to take upon yourself burdens that aren't already upon you. And the Lord is the prime example of all of these things. I could have gone into that with the first version of this 0:10:23 - 0:10:55 potential message. Um He is the demonstration of how to solve all of our problems, which is beautiful and that is the greatest love. The second is that he obviously showed us that he preferred his own suffering to ours. And if we accept his sacrifice, then that's exactly what happens is that we benefit 0:10:55 - 0:11:27 from his suffering with his stripes, we are healed. So um as I thought about whether or not I should send that message that I would take his place if it would spare him from this, I thought where he is in life as a person and with the intensity of pain he's feeling right now. I don't, I think it's beyond 0:11:27 - 0:11:53 his capacity to believe that I'm telling the truth if I were to say that. And in that case, what is a tremendous expression of love would be regarded as something callous or trite and it would have the opposite of the intended effect. And that's really sad. So I thought, OK, well, what, what else could 0:11:53 - 0:12:23 I say? And as I step through any number of options, going further and further down in the scale, the hierarchy of love demonstrated love. Um Every time I came up with an idea, I thought he's not gonna take this in the way that I would hope. And um finally, what I ended up with was just thinking of you 0:12:23 - 0:12:56 . And uh why does this matter at all? Why am I bothering to share this with, with the world here? Well, how often do we impede the Lord in his desired demonstration of love? Because I promise you that we all have limits and what we're willing to perceive, receive and value. And uh we come into the world 0:12:56 - 0:13:24 with those limits. And one of the primary purposes of, of this life is for us to get rid of as many as we can and to squish them down, attenuate them as much as we possibly can. So it's worth thinking about what barriers you might have that impede God's expressions of love to you. Because if it's this 0:13:24 - 0:13:43 difficult to, to communicate the comparably minor quantities of love that a mortal can feel for another mortal. Imagine how difficult it must be for God to demonstrate his eternal love to us.