Do you know that the caffeine in your morning Joe doesn’t really give you energy? What it actually does is to make you think you’re not tired.
Broadly speaking, a neurotransmitter called adenosine attaches itself to certain cell receptors. This binding inhibits nerve cell activity and causes drowsiness.
Clear so far? Now, to a nerve cell, caffeine looks remarkably like adenosine. Caffeine binds itself to those same receptors, basically nudging adenosine aside. Think of you sitting on a chair meant for someone else and that someone has to walk away. The result is that the nerve cell speeds up rather than slowing down, and we feel stimulated and energetic.
Love is like that. As I write this, our kasambahay (domestic helper) has returned to her province for good. This left my wife Lucy to do all the household work: cooking, cleaning, laundry and ironing. I would arrive home, bone-weary from work and the long commute. Then she asked for my help with certain chores. The top shelf of a kitchen cabinet had to be cleaned and I had the height to do it. The five-gallon water bottle in our dispenser had to be replaced. The hefty laundry basket had to be hauled downstairs.
Do I beg off? Do I promise to do it another time? No. I choose to forget my fatigue – drag my tired frame, if need be – and help her with those tasks. That’s more than sheer will power. That’s love.
It works the other way, too. I harbor no illusion that Lucy’s household chores are easy. Take my breakfast, for example. As the kasambahay did, she had to get out of bed at 4:30 AM to cook. I tried to dissuade her, saying that I will just take my breakfast in a restaurant on the way to work. When she realized that I meant fast food, she exclaimed “no way!” It wasn’t a burden to her. She’s the modern-day version of Brother Lawrence who wrote the classic The Practice of the Presence of God, finding sublime spirituality in the kitchen amidst all those pots and pans.
Did she prefer to be sandwiched between a comfy blanket and crispy bedsheets? I’m sure. But she gets up anyway. That’s love.
Love is like coffee. We like it steaming hot, rapturously fragrant, and smoothly tasteful.
So the next time you’re dead beat but need to serve your spouse, think coffee. You may not have the energy, but you chose not to feel tired. Let the caffeine in your relationship be compassion and commitment. It is served best in packs of happy self-sacrifice.
Now that’s a really great brew!
About the author: Nelson T. Dy is one of the Top 100 Filipinos to follow in Linkedin for 2021. An accomplished author, speaker, coach and trainer, he tackles career, relationship, purpose and spirituality issues.
He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the De La Salle University, followed by an MBA degree from the Asian Institute of Management. He has over 30 years of experience in manufacturing and industrial marketing. He is the Assistant Vice President for two packaging plants. He is married to the wonderful Lucy Cheng-Dy.
Visit his website nelsontdy.com or contact him via nelsontdy.com@gmail.com.
There’s a kind of prison that we carry everywhere with us. Whatever that traps our hearts in despair and darkness, that is our prison.
The funny thing is that the prison door is always open. Beyond that door beckons sunlight and beauty. Yet we find ourselves unable to step out to freedom. That’s because our ankles are shackled. Those shackles can be fear, hurt, loneliness, regrets, self-loathing, whatever is holding us back. Interestingly, we shackle ourselves.
Want to hear something even funnier? We try to break our shackles with tools that don’t work. We tell ourselves to snap out of it. We hope tomorrow things will be different. We numb the pain with myriad addictions. We might as well try to chip away at the metal chains with a plastic spoon.
Yet there we are: still inside that prison, shackled. Meantime, we can almost hear the door saying, “Hey, I’m still open!”
Mind a suggestion? See your prison the way God sees it. Is God with you there? Do you believe God loves you utterly? Can you trust God to redeem your past and usher you to a wonderful future?
Imagine gazing at your shackles, but this time the way God looks at them. Watch those shackles melt away, unable to resist the laser beam of His love and mercy.
Then, let God have the pleasure of getting you up on your feet and leading you out that door, the door which He has kept open… just for you.
Come. Let’s step outside. I hear a beautiful life awaits us, because we follow a beautiful God.
We all feel some form of emptiness in our lives. It’s the pang when we desire a blessing, but God has apparently left us in the cold. Or when we feel we could have done better but are dissatisfied with our lives.
Within Luke chapter 5 are beautiful lessons.
Jesus was teaching to a crowd by the lake of Gennesaret. The crowds were already pressing Him to the shore. Any further pushing and Jesus would hit the lake.
So He got into one of the boats, which was Simon Peter’s, and asked him to put out a little way from the land. Then He sat down and began teaching the multitudes from the boat. What an innovative idea from the mind of Christ! He saw a boat and transformed it into a pulpit. Now He could talk to the crowds and stay dry at the same time.
No doubt Peter was with Jesus in the boat. Talk about a captive audience! But was Peter receptive to Jesus’ words ? I don’t think so. Peter and his colleagues worked hard fishing the previous night, but caught nothing. Nada. Zero. Zilch. So while Jesus taught, perhaps Peter was brooding about the futility of last night.
The barren nets. The aching muscles. The despairing hearts.
Peter was empty.
Do you feel the same way? Even no matter how hard you worked? Why does your heart ache?
A misspent past?
Longing for a spouse?
A disappointing marriage?
A stalled career ?
A bout with depression?
But meditate on what happened next. Jesus did something unexpected. After He had finished speaking, He told Peter, “Put out into the deep water for a catch.”
Simon must have groaned. He must have thought, “Oh, no! Another exercise in futility! And for what? Who’s this guy anyway? Since when does a carpenter know about fishing? Doesn’t He know I’m the veteran around here? Why doesn’t He just stick to preaching?”
But…
Peter answered, “Master, we worked hard all night and caught nothing, but at Your bidding I will let down the nets.” Despite the fatigue, Peter had a good heart: “Jesus, I don’t understand. But because You said so, I’ll do it.”
When Peter and his group complied, their net captured a great quantity of fish, so great that the net began to break. He had to signal to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. When they hauled the fish onto both boats, the catch was still so great that they began to sink.
Get it? Even your emptiness is by God’s design, for if you’re not empty, how can He fill you?
But notice the sequence: First, God uses you, then He blesses you. Had Peter’s boat been filled from last night’s fishing, he couldn’t let Jesus use his boat. He’d tell Jesus to wait while they unload the catch and clean the boat.
What is it that God first wants to do to you and through you ?
Let God use you in your emptiness. Until when? Until He is finished. Then He will bless.
Notice when Jesus began to bless Peter? When He had finished teaching the crowd. There is a divine timetable to your blessing. If you’re empty now, it’s not that God is stingy. It’s still not yet time. Who knows, it could come next year… next month…tomorrow … today.
Even the blessing is purely by His grace. Jesus didn’t have to do it. But He did. And it was totally unexpected. It must have caught Peter off-guard. Submit yourself to the grace of God, trust in His goodness, and He will do what is best. And He doesn’t do it only for you, but so that you will be His overflowing channel to bless those around you.
What a wonderful Father we have, who uses even our emptiness for His glory! Indeed, just as fullness comes from Him, so does emptiness.
Is your life like Peter’s empty boat? Make Jesus your Captain. Let Him call the shots. In due time, He will bless. Maybe not the way you expect, but like Peter, you will bow down before Him in awe and worship. And as Peter did, follow Him.
Surrender your emptiness into His hands and watch Him fill you. “For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace.” (John 1:16)
While Jesus was here on earth, He visited a place called Bethesda.
There, camped around a pool, were a multitude of the sick, blind, lame and withered. They stayed at the poolside because they believed that the water had magical powers: from time to time an angel would come down from heaven and stir the waters. Whoever jumped into the pool first would be healed of whatever ailment he had. (The story is recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 5.)
Pretend that we are with Jesus as He surveyed these people. What a panorama of suffering! We gaze into each face and eyes stare back at us in quiet despair. Some have been ailing and waiting for the pool waters to move for so long that even their strength to groan is gone.
But we see an even sadder thing. These people were pinning their hopes of healing on that pool. They didn’t realize that the Great Healer was in their midst! How the tender heart of our Savior must have ached. Instead of looking unto God, these people have reduced their lives into a few ripples of water.
Suddenly Jesus singled out one man, lying next to the pool. He had been sick for thirty-eight years. Jesus asked him, “Do you wish to get well?”
What a question! We’d think, “Of course he wants to get well!”
We’d also suppose hope would well up inside this man. But he answered Jesus, “Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me.” Paraphrase this to mean, “Jesus, it’s bad enough I’ve spent the best years of my life lying flat on my back. It’s worse when other people jumped into the pool and stole the healing that should have been mine.”
Before we get to the rest of the story, let’s pause and consider. The world is like that pool of Bethesda. Do we see a multitude of impaired people? Not necessarily physically, but emotionally? How about socially? Or even spiritually? And do we see people staking their well-being on solutions as elusive as water, even though the Savior stands in their midst, ready to give them the solid help they need?
More to the point: are we among these very people?
Going back to the story, the Lord was gracious. Rather than be turned off by the man’s self-pity and defeatism, He told the man, “Arise, take up your mat, and walk.” Immediately the man became well and began to walk. After almost four barren decades, he was in perfect health!
I wonder: if Jesus were to ask us that same question “Do you wish to get well?” what would we tell him?
“Yes, Lord, I wish to get well…
“I wish to end this heartache once and for all…”
“I wish to be released from my past…”
“I wish to trust You, but I continue to be sick with worry…”
“I wish to break this sin that keeps coming back…”
Many times, we live in defeat, sorrow and worry because we depend on career, connections, companions, cash and credit line for our security. But now the Savior comes and offers, “Do you wish to get well?” The wonderful thing is that despite our weaknesses, He still invites us to “Arise… and walk.” Let us get up from our slump. Start walking. Start really living. Simply because Jesus tells us so.
If we want to be free from our past, arise and move on.
If we want to be free from worry, arise and trust God.
If we want to be free from loneliness, arise and connect with people.
As we arise and walk, we’ll be amazed at strength that seemed to come from nowhere. Such is Jesus’ sweet enabling if we’d take Him at His word. Such is the power when the Only Begotten Son makes this possible.
Marriage does not begin with you and your spouse. It begins with you and your God. Get right with God first. Then getting right with your spouse will follow, perhaps with a lot less struggle and more joy than just applying techniques.
God gets a ringside seat to all the nauseating, maggot-infested muck in our hearts… but wants to be with us, anyway. There was never an instant when He ceased to care for us. Yet He does not pander to our caprices. He is not above withholding the sugar pill that we hanker as good but He knows is bad for us.
Neither is He remiss in urging us to swallow the bitter pill that we recoil from as evil, but in His eyes is exactly what we need. In fact, whatever grieves us – a difficult job, problematic health, wobbly finances and yes, that impossible spouse – are not signs of His displeasure, but are rather invitations to participate in His grace.
I know for some people what I am about to say will be very hard to believe. But here goes: God loves you very, very much.
Here is how Larry Crabb paints a Romantic God. His verbal brushstrokes are so eloquent, I beg you to savor the next two paragraphs:
“The most powerful thing we can do to help someone change is to offer them a rich taste of God’s incredible goodness in the New Covenant. He looks at us with eyes of delight, with eyes that see a goodness beneath the mess, with a heart that beats wildly with excitement over who we are and who we will become. And sometimes he exposes what we are convinced would make him turn away in disgust in order to amaze us with his grace. That’s connecting. When we connect like that, it can change people’s lives.
“God doesn’t fix us or pressure us. He does whatever it takes to reveal himself to us. That may include probing deeply into our messy hearts or insisting that we do something we really don’t want to do. But the core purpose is always the same, not to repair or exhort us, but to draw us into a fuller appreciation of his beauty, to dazzle us with the sunrises of his nature, to awe us with the Grand Canyons of his character, to entice us with the endless fields of fragrant flowers blooming in his heart.”
Wow!
Therefore, how can we transform our selfish hearts and thus transform our marriages? To borrow the language of Psalm 34:8, by tasting and seeing the All-good God in all His indescribable splendor.
If you want to revitalize or even rescue your marriage, perhaps you need to lay aside all those techniques and theory. Start with God. Ask for His forgiveness. Enjoy His sheer goodness to you. He wants to have a romance with you. Then, with a cleansed and awakened heart, be the romantic person your spouse needs.
My wife and I married late, so we decided not to have children. But as a girl hugged me during one of my book signings (see photo), that was the closest I ever felt to being a father.
I’ll tell this story in a minute. But when I was her age, I was fresh out of college, on survival mode, looking for a stable job with a surplus paycheck. In short, I was chasing success the way many in their 20s would define it: position, possessions, prestige. You may say: money, mansion, Mercedes. Throw in a happy marriage and I’ve made it.
By my late 30s, I was at the peak of my career. I was Country Manager for a Fortune 500 company. But something felt strangely hollow. So my response was to look for more success.
Then the rug was pulled out under me. Because of the Asian currency crisis in the late 90’s, I was retrenched. I thought someone with my academic and career credentials, I would get a new job in no time.
Well, “no time” stretched on for weeks, months, a year, two years. My savings went down to zero while my self-esteem went down to negative. My family sacrificed and invested in my education, and I felt I had let them down. To their credit, they were supportive and showed unconditional love. But I never felt more useless and ashamed in my whole life.
Through those barren days and dark nights, I resorted to journaling. Pouring down my grief and anger on paper saved me from going the deep end.
My fortunes picked up when I found a new job and married the girl of my dreams. As we moved into our house, my wife Lucy saw three-ring binders filled with print-outs.
“What are these?” she asked me.
“Oh,” I replied nonchalantly, “those were the journals I wrote when I was down and out.”
“These are good!” she exclaimed, “What you wrote should be shared with the rest of this world.”
Long story short, we found a publisher and in 2004, my first book Finding Comfort was born. It compiled some of my journals which talked about loneliness, disappointment, bitterness, and more.
The book had a “Contact Me” section which carried my email address. Soon, I was receiving emails from readers who were going through similar emotional problems. Some thanked me for the encouragement they found in my book. Others were asking for my advice.
That’s when everything clicked. I found something better than success. I found significance.
Going back to that photo, it was taken in 2018. My publisher believed in Finding Comfort so much that they updated and relaunched it. During the book signing, this nervous wisp of a girl came up to me and whispered, “Sir, may I hug you?”
She slipped away before I can interview her. But my wife and I like to think that the book made a difference in her life. I lost my success but out of the ashes of my failure came significance.
Now that I am about to retire, I have heard a lot of people saying that they were furiously climbing up a ladder only to discover that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall. They were pursuing success, only to realize they should have pursued significance.
I have nothing against getting rich, driving a nifty car, and living in a dream house. But we are wired to be more than that. We are wired to make an impact on other people’s lives.
But here’s my real message:
You don’t have to be in your 40s or in a C-suite to pursue significance. You can start while you are young and mobile. Don’t wander through life for ten or twenty years before you conclude that while success is pleasant, significance is far more satisfying.
Start measuring your life not by your net worth, but by the positive changes you are making in the people around you.
Start small, start somewhere, start now.
Once you embark on a quest for significance, you will arrive at something even better: legacy.
As covid continues to stalk our streets and ravages our wellbeing, where do we find relief?
How can we lighten up as we are saddled with the daily chores of WFH and the anxieties of a medical treatment? When our spirits run dry, our nerves ragged, our mind numb?
Entertainment is good. But after that TV show, then what?
Shall we flitter away irredeemable time with social media? (I’m raising my hand right now: guilty!)
David was in a valley he wrote Psalm 16. He could have tried to forget his woes thru wine, warfare or women. But he did not. He chose to seek refuge in God (v 1), and made God his only good (v 2). He reminds us that in God’s presence, there is fullness of joy (v 11).
David did not seek God for what He can do for him, but for Himself! He wanted God to be his inheritance (v 5-6). Imagine an infinite, holy God offering Himself as the prized treasure of a finite, sinful man. What an outpouring of divine love!
Could it be that we forget to enjoy God, simply because we forget who God is? We can be swept by our busy routines or pressing worries that we neglect to carve out time with God. To be unhurried in His presence. To relish His goodness. To fall in love with God… all over again.
Many of us have tasted sleepless nights during times of trouble. Our minds would torment us — recycling fears, hatching schemes — as we toss and turn in bed.
But as we make God our counselor, He will guide even our thoughts at night (v 7). What’s more, He’ll also go before us. Even before the next problem-laden day arrives at dawn, He is already there and thus we will not be shaken (v 8).
David exclaimed, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoices, my flesh also will dwell securely” (v 9). He was so secure in God’s goodness that even as we walk through a seemingly lonely and scary future, yes, even while the pandemic blankets us, He shepherds us until we finally meet Him face to face.
David’s circumstances did not change. The problems were still there. But God made the difference. He did not merely pump David up with joy. God is David’s joy.
I have a confession to make. I’m not yet where David was. But the journey is there. It starts with our hearts. And it starts today.
Take time out and go back to the presence of God. As we rediscover Him, joy will spring anew in our hearts. We will find rest for our soul. “In Thy presence there is fullness of joy, in Thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”
God waits for you patiently, whispering, “I’m all yours. Be all Mine.”
Be His. Be all His.
In a previous job, I hated to be in the same room with Jeff (not his real name). He was boorish, hot-headed, unreasonable… well, he just rubbed everyone the wrong way.
It didn’t help that, in occasional Bible studies and Sunday sermons, I am told to love my neighbor. What, me? I’d rather migrate to another country.
Perhaps you have a Jeff in your office, family, church, wherever you are. You have three basic responses: avoid him like the proverbial plague, put up with him when you can’t, or butt heads with him. The first is the classic flight syndrome, the second will stress you out, and the third can get pretty ugly.
I have come to learn that loving the unlovable is not easy, but doable. It is more than gritting your teeth and say “God tells me to love Jeff, so I just gotta.” It comes after some self-reflection. It is a mistake to live the Christian life without some understanding of human psychology.
So how can you love the unlovable? Here are four principles that I have learned.
Scrap the labels. Have you tried putting out a fire by dousing gasoline on it? Similarly, when you label someone as a buffoon or an idiot, it only rankles you more. It is worse when you see only a part of that person and generalize the fault. You see a worker turning in his report late and you immediately conclude him to be lazy. Beware of that behavior.
Perhaps when we refuse to love someone, it reveals some idol in our hearts. If I were to snap at that worker, it shows that I worship efficiency. There are times I show that I am good in strategy but not in empathy. I realize I can be so task-oriented that I need to balance it with being people-oriented.
Identify the unlovable traits. It is part of reality to be turned off by certain people, but usually we have a vague notion why. It helps to name the traits that turn you off. A subtle effect is that you will be separating the person whom you are to love from the behavior that you hate. In Jeff’s case, one of his upsetting habits was to interrupt people while they were talking. Imagine the chaos if you were to involve Jeff in a brainstorming session.
Question your standards. No, I don’t mean you condone abusive behavior. I mean that when you find it hard to love someone, usually it’s because he or she violates your standards somehow. The question is: is it fair to impose those standards on them?
I was complaining about Jeff to my wife, Lucy. “Why can’t he just shut up and listen?” I ranted, “I do that to my teammates, why can’t he?” To which Lucy wisely replied, “He’s not you.”
A little self-reflection showed her point. Unwittingly, I was saying “You would think that with Jeff’s educational attainment / age / position (take your pick), he should have known better.” But that is the point. He doesn’t.
Worse, I have to test myself with my own standards, too. How many times I have been impatient with Lucy and I cut her off, too? There is a little-known but sobering piece of wisdom in Ecclesiastes 7:21-22:
Do not pay attention to every word people say,
or you may hear your servant cursing you—
for you know in your heart
that many times you yourself have cursed others.
Sometimes a reality check helps me be more patient of other people’s shortcomings. Since it is meaningless and even counterproductive to hold someone against your own standards, you may want to lower your expectations. In my case, I stopped expecting Jeff to act professionally, but accepted reality as it is. It is easier to craft responsive strategies based on what is than what should be.
See through eyes of compassion. The Gospels record of Jesus reaching out to the masses. If you were to understand the crowd, you may find them unlovable: clingy, me-centered, fickle. It may have been the same crowd who would shout “crucify him!”.
But Jesus reached out anyway. Why? I am touched by this detail: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36, italics added). The secret to loving the unlovable is to see them through eyes of compassion, not compliance.
In one sense, Jeff was to be pitied. He was sabotaging his career and his relationships. Perhaps his behavior was to mask some deep-seated pain. Perhaps that was how he was raised by his parents or mentored by a former boss. Perhaps he was really insecure with himself and needed to show his worth in the only way he knew how.
This technique is called reframing, where we see people from a brand new set of assumptions that calms, not agitates, our emotions.
When you think about it, how would God see us? Based on our merits alone, we would be unlovable by His perfect standards. We have our share of filth. We have our monsters deep inside us. But this is the astounding news: “We love because He first loved us” (I John 4:19).
If this fills us with guilt, we are missing the point. The wonder is that He sees the worst in us and loves us anyway. He has proven this love by having His Son die on the cross for precisely that filth, that monster. What would spring within our hearts is gratitude, from which we can relate with others through grace. After all, have your noticed how gratitude and grace seem to have the same root word?
Sadly, Jeff was let go. As you would imagine, his performance appraisal did not speak well of him. I lost touch of him since then. But while I wonder where he is right now, I wonder more if I can embrace him as a brother should I see him again.
But I can start with someone else today. The choice to love the unlovable is ours.
December 13, 2021
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