“it is easy to halve the potato where there is love” {irish proverb}
i read this quote today on one of my favorite blogs... shutter sisters and i loved what the author of the blog entry had to say at the end of her entry... (not to mention that GREAT four leaf clover/heart photo of the day, i am so jealous of that photo, check it out)...
it is hard for me to halve a potato (or in the more common vernacular of the day “split my french fries”).
i tend to think of myself as a gal who “loves deeply”. i have lots of family and friends who i LOVE deeply (or so i think). really, all of you reading this, i love you deeply (even my blog stalker, eva, who i only met once.)
1 Peter 4:8
Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.
and i really do like the message version of this verse...
1 Peter 4:8
Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it.
loving deeply, doing everything out of love for God and others, not obligation, not to be seen as loving, but to really BE loving. a constant struggle for me. covering (not pointing out) other’s sins, rejoicing in OTHER’s triumphs and good things happening to them and not wondering “why don’t i get this, that, whatever that is that they got that i want”...
potato halving, hard.
loving, darn near impossible.
but guess what, my life depends on that kind of love.
Matthew 19:26-27
The disciples were staggered. "Then who has any chance at all?"
Jesus looked hard at them and said, "No chance at all if you think you can pull it off yourself. Every chance in the world if you trust God to do it."
what if i started trusting God and halving the potatoes in my life? what if i truly loved and did everything out of love? what would that look like on a thursday in march?
the thing about that irish proverbial saying is that you kind of have to understand what the potato meant to the irish to really get it. potatoes meant life to the irish. it was their main source of food and revenue.
for me potato sharing would be sharing the very essence of life with others. literally giving myself away, in the right way, for the right reasons. the Bible teaches us that the only way we keep our life is it we lose it. the only way to keep eating those potatoes is that we share. and it would be easier to do it, if there was love.
i struggle with this all the time. i am either giving too much of myself for the wrong reasons and draining the life out of everything and everyone in my family... or i am on the selfish setting and it is all about me. i guess both ways it is still all about me... me, the “martyr look at how good i am” me, or me the “lazy laying on the sofa eating bon bons all day” me. is there is a third me somewhere... and is she is a potato sharer? and can i meet her someday soon?
more on this tomorrow... unless i get an urge to sit and eat bon bons all day. and remember, i love you and MIGHT split my fries with you.
