Boomerang Truth

Boomerang emotions – emotions that have seemingly been dealt with and cast away only to return to the thrower to deal with again

Boomerang truths – life truths seemingly learned only to present themselves back to the thrower to learn again and again

I wrote about boomerang emotions in the months following my husband’s death when speaking about emotions that kept resurfacing, no matter how many times I faced them, wrote about them, cried about them, or talked about them, they kept coming back to me like a boomerang.   I was able to work through some emotions successfully, lay them aside and then walk away from them with the wisdom, insight, and healing that came from facing them… but others would come back to strike me out of nowhere and I would have to deal with them all over again…and would often times hit me harder the second time.

I am now experiencing boomerang truths…Truths about life and living to which my eyes have been opened and yet they continue to come back to me in order to take me deeper, impress themselves upon me in more profound ways than before.  Each time they come back, it hits me closer and closer to the heart.

At times I feel like looking up towards heaven to say, “Okay...I get it!”

…But truly loving others, accepting others, showing compassion towards others, without boundaries, without judgments, the way Christ did when he walked this earth, is a never-ending lesson. Does our love and compassion look like his?  If not, that boomerang will continue to circle back until the love we cast onto others reflects him more and more so that every time we reach to someone, every time we touch someone, every time we serve someone, every time we listen to someone, or forgive someone, embrace someone, love someone, and accept someone…we reflect him, his glory, and his love.

Galatians 5:13-15   MSG “It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life.  Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom.  Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows.  For everything we know about God’s word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself.  That’s an act of true freedom.  If you bite and ravage each other, watch out-in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then?”

I have written about it in several other blog posts…everything boils down to love. The gospel of Jesus Christ is summed up in one word – Love.   Love extravagantly.  Love the unlovable.  Love because He first loved us.  Love no matter what someone’s life looks like.  Love no matter how different they look from you.  

We have been set free to love.  If we are not walking in love, have a lifestyle of loving others, and are seeing others through the lens of love, are we truly set free?  What are we doing with our freedom anyway??

Are we instead using our freedom to judge others?  Judge their mistakes, judge their failures, judge their past, judge their decisions, and judge the lives they live?  Can they see that love, which we have been set free to freely give, through our judgments?

.... Most likely not.

Romans 14:13-16 MSG  “Forget about deciding what’s right for each other.  Here’s what you need to be concerned about:  that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it already is.  I’m convinced – Jesus convinced me! – that everything as it is in itself is holy.  We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it can contaminate it… Remember these are also people Christ died for …not just for those who appear to be living right.”  

To put judgment even more firmly in its place, verse 21 goes on to say, 

“Don’t say or do things that might interfere with the free exchange of love.”

Judging interferes with love. Love is the bottom line… Are we speaking, acting or responding in ways that are interfering with the free exchange of love?

This boomerang truth keeps circling back because it is the only truth that matters.

Love, love, and when you think you have loved enough…love some more.

Jesus lived it and said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this, all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”  (John 13:34,35)   The word used for “new” here means unused, fresh, novel…new in regard to form or quality. He was, in essence, saying, “Loving others is going to look different now.  It’s a fresh, new way. It is going to look like the way I treated you and what I did for you.”   If we are to love as Jesus loved, we need to know what his love looked like.  His love was sacrificial.  His love was unconditional.  His love was constant.  His love was self-sustaining…it ran on “auto pilot”.  It was the foundation of all that He did.  Everything He did was motivated by love.

I want to keep my eyes straight ahead, always recognizing opportunities to love like Jesus as well as recognize when I don’t.  To exercise my freedom in the purpose for which I was set free. To love without borders.  To see others through His lens…to see and love others for the people that they are…someone for which Christ died.