The Bloat

     My wife just made 19 dozen cookies to send to our kids in college. I love cookies! I love cookie dough even more. Have you ever eaten a dozen uncooked cookie balls? Right now my stomach feels as though it has a bowling ball in it.

    I actually considered putting this post off until tomorrow when I won’t be feeling as though moving to the computer will off-set the rotation of the planet… Duty has won out, but only just!

    “Love does not boast. It is not proud.” I Cor. 13:4″.

     Boasting and pride are like uncooked cookie balls. They feel good going down. Once they are in, though, they start to swell inside your spirit until there is no room left for anything else but selfishness.

    Love cannot dwell alongside pride and boasting because love is other centered. Pride and boasting are entirely about aggrandizing self. 

     Strangely the root of pride and boasting is usually not a huge ego. So many begin down this path because they are looking for something they don’t have, self-worth. Rather than coming to find their identities in Christ men and women across the face of the planet have decided to create their own personas through shameless self-promotion.

    The word used for boasting in I Corinthians 13 indicates not only self-promotion but exaggeration. The saddest thing about pride and boasting is that they are not based in reality. Both behaviors always lead the perpetrators to think things that are untrue of themselves. That is why pride can only come before a fall. The one who swallows pride always elevates himself to a higher position than he can maintain.

     The remedy for pride and boasting though is love. When we begin in love to think of others more highly than ourselves, pride and boasting vanish as quickly as the bloat before Pepto-bismol or Premarin.

      Further when love begins its work inside us the roots of inadequacy that foster pride and boasting are swallowed up in an abiding satisfaction that cannot be undone.

       Let us love with passion then!