Building On A Solid Foundation
In my former years my criteria for a solid relationship--familial, friend, casual, romantic-- was humor, fun, loyalty and trust. Even at an early age I understood these characteristics as the foundation to connectedness and belonging. As I grew and matured, laughter turned into tears, amusement to fear, faithfulness to unforgiveness and confidence to doubt. Why does it seem that our childlike faith and wonder doesn’t linger into our adolescence and adulthood? When your faith walk starts to resemble a trapeze act and you hear the audience booing and not cheering.
More often than not, we’re experiencing something called disappointment.
A friend once told me, “our expectations are resentments under construction.” In other words, when we set expectations on things and people we’re bound to be let down. Why, because we’re not perfect; only God is perfect. Please hear me, I am not saying don’t have standards but our expectations, if not verbalized and realistic, can leave our relationships little hope for survival. But thank God for Jesus. He set the mold in His life, death and resurrection. First, the Father GAVE His Son so that we might have an eternity with Him (John 3:16). God is love (1 John 4:8). So if love gave, at minimum a relationship should be founded upon giving. Love is others-centered with an admiration for humanity (1 Corinthians 13:4-5). Second, Christ taught us that when life seems like a game of dodgeball, His word is like an invisible barrier that later leaves you with ammunition to respond to the enemy. Third, the Holy Spirit is our reinforcement to what God said and what Jesus did.
Like a house built on solid rock, we must choose to build all that we find valuable on Christ our cornerstone (Ephesian 2:20). Seeing God’s kingdom here on earth, starts with relationship, “Our Father…” (Matthew 6:9-13). Let’s ensure that our relationship to the Father is in tact to set the tone for how we connect with others. In the words of psychologist and philosopher, William James, “we are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”