In a recent Wednesday night Bible study, our pastor touched on a passage from First John 3: 16: “. . .He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay our lives down for each other.”

 

Die for my family in Christ?  No sweat! 

Fantasy: My Christian sister is standing in the middle of the road with a twenty ton semi plummeting straight for her unsuspecting self.  I throw myself between them.  Voila!  My sister is alive and well on planet earth, and I am alive and well in heaven.  Send me back to earth, and I can do the same thing every day of the week and twice on Sundays.

It’s never the big death that makes me hesitate.  That’s the stuff heroes and sagas are made of.  Besides, it can only happen once.  No.  It’s the again and again mini deaths that make me hesitate, and all too often back away.

Suddenly it was twenty years ago, and I was playing my accordion; a big, lovely handmade-in-Italy, instrument with sound chambers and built-in mikes.  With its switches on mellow, its notes swirling through an amplifier, it filled the house with music.  I loved playing semi-classics that goose bumped me to heaven and back.  Ah, what bliss.  No concert organ could compete with the soft intensity of my Da Vinci’s dulcet tones.  

 

How I loved to practice during the day while the kids were in school.  How wonderful to get through an entire song without, “Mom, I can’t find any clean underwear.”  Or, “Mom, Leslie’s looking at me.  Tell her to look at Kim not me.”

Into this musical revelry came a neighbor—a brand new Christian going through a bitter divorce. 

Her pain-clouded eyes heralded her misery. “Kathy, I need to talk with you.” 

But my unmerciful self thought, what else is new?  Your marriage is over.  We have covered this ground before. We have prayed about it.  We have sought the encouragement and direction of the Word; all endlessly.

Hadn’t I done enough?

Hadn’t I spent hours with her, holding her hand, listening to her cry, telling her repeatedly that God would take care of her.  Besides, the kids would be home in an hour. 

So I sat there running my hands softly up and down the keyboard.  Making no move to unstrap the accordion from my shoulders, I just halfheartedly looked up at her between longing glances at my sheet music hoping she would get the message, go away, and leave me to play in peace and quiet.  

She got the message.  She went away.  But God didn’t.  Instead the verses from First John 3:16 slipped gently into the envelope of my stingy mind.  “ . . .He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for each other.”  I got the message.  

Now the meaning became persistently personal.  “Kathy, I laid down my life for you.  And you, dear child, wouldn’t even lay down your accordion for your needy sister?”

 

Sure I would “big die” for her—oncoming semis, speeding trains, bullets, you name it.  Grandly I would throw myself into the breach.  But she didn’t need my grandstand heroics.  She needed my mini death; my listening heart as I held her trembling hand one more time, prayed one more time, encouraged one more time.

That selfish day I lost an opportunity to decrease so Christ could increase.  I refused to lay down my life so He could arise with healing in hers.

My music?  Its mellowness had become somehow tainted.  It sounded, well—lifeless.