Love's Dwelling

The hunt for 841, the window to the brain, and the choice to live where you want to.

Today, we learn to love better information.

"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"

New episodes drop on Tuesdays.

Transcript

If you are a regular listener, you know that now is the time to pay attention because usually here is where we go on a carnival ride into the past – ancient Greece or war-torn France or maybe the distant peaks of the Alps… but not today my friend, not today.

Because there is no time for history this week – not when history is being made right now, today, in Santa Cruz, CA.  If you haven’t been following the four week ongoing search and pursuit out of Santa Cruz, CA… you are missing the most important news event of the year.  Federal and state officials are canvassing the waterways and the beachfronts for a repeat offender, a burly female with a brazen criminal record.  Despite four weeks of tracking her, the feds have yet to catch her.  This week, the Coast Guard got involved.  Boats, helicopters, her own Twitter following.  If you haven’t yet, it’s time you learned about the naughtiest five year old from coast to coast – the sea otter without a name – she is simply known as Otter 841.

I’m Scott Beyer and this is the Love Better podcast where we explore the truths and lies about love and more importantly how to turn love into a skill – something we can get better at and hone along the way.

         Ladies and gentlemen, we live in glorious times.  Right now there is a manhunt – excuse me, an otter hunt - traversing the beaches of Santa Cruz for a five year old female sea otter that has been stealing surfboards from people.  Oh yes, there are pictures.  Sea otters are not to be confused with river otters – this lady is a daunting dame – she probably weighs in somewhere in the vicinity of seventy pounds and is around four feet long.   She has been approaching local surfers, charging them until they ditch their boards and then literally surfing off with them, bro.  Otter 841 shall remain nameless until she is captured... but she is a pirate.  You heard me correctly, right now we live in a world with a pirate otter.  This Sea Otter Steals Surfboards by the Seashore.

To make matters even more hilarious, she is called Otter 841 because that is her radio tag number.  That’s right – this otter is tagged.  They can track her via her tag and radio transmitter because she was born in captivity, later released by the Monterey Aquarium, and then well, age old story, fell into the wrong crowd, and took up a life of crime.  Sea otters were nearly hunted into extinction in the 1900s so federal and state protections are in place to allow their populations to rebound – Otter 841 is a pirate, but with diplomatic immunity.  She is a threatened species that has decided to threaten back.  So, until Monterey Bay Aquarium can capture her, she is spending her summer in search of the perfect board and a gnarly wave.

         So, what does all this have to do with love?  Here is what I think – we make choices in life, and those choices either help us to be more lovely people or they don’t.  Otter 841 is news… but she isn’t the news that shows up on the front page.  She is cute and whimsical and hilariously feisty, but she isn’t politics or murder or suffering or cruelty or a pandemic or an economic crash or an election cycle – she’s an otter.  And for me, she is exactly the news I need.

Philippians 4:8 says, “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.”

         When Paul told the brethren to dwell on those things – dwell is an interesting word choice – and it isn’t accidental.  We dwell where we live, and if we want to be lovely people we can’t live in ugly places.  Other translations of that verse use words like meditate or think upon or fix your mind upon… but I like dwell because dwell stands for dwelling and my dwelling is my house.  I get to decide where I live and how I decorate the place.  And today, instead of focusing on sickness and pain or misery and heartache – I’m on Team 841.  I’ve got otter squad goals.

         And I will tell you, for me personally, this has to be a choice just as intentional as buying a home.  Where our minds dwell is an issue of intentionality and if we want to be lovely people, we need to find good land to make our mental homes.  And if you really want to see how easy it is to slip into an ugly dwelling place – all you have to do is look at Simon the Magician.

         So, let’s set the stage - the story we are looking at is in Acts 8.  The city of Samaria is a bustling urban metropolis.  It is exactly the place you would go if you were a magician.  Lots of people means a big audience.  So Simon wows the crowds and makes a name for himself.  The people love him, they adore him, and unsurprisingly, Simon loves it.  He basks in the limelight of their affection even though he knows it is all an illusion.

         And then one day, a real miracle worker, Philip, shows up. The same audiences that watched the illusions of Simon now listen to the gospel of Jesus Christ from Philip and they convert.  Even Simon converts.  People are baptized, washing away their sins, by the hundreds.  For Simon, it is a wonderful time to be alive.  No more sins, no more guilt for tricking all those people and lying to his audiences – a second chance to live better and do better.

         But Simon ends up fixing his mind on the wrong things – Simon doesn’t dwell on forgiveness and hope and Jesus.  Simon thinks about how he wishes it was him that was back up front.  Simon wants the prestige in the church that he used to have in the world.  And when he tries to buy his way into church leadership, the apostles confront him.  Here are the words of the apostle Peter to Simon:

Peter said to Simon, "May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain the gift of God with money! You have no part or portion in this matter, for your heart is not right before God. Therefore repent of this wickedness of yours, and pray the Lord that, if possible, the intention of your heart may be forgiven you. For I see that you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bondage of iniquity." (Acts 8:20-23)

         Did you catch Peter’s explanation of Simon’s problem?  It all comes down to a preposition – the word ‘in’.  Simon is IN the gall of bitterness and he is IN the bondage of iniquity.  When you dwell in bitterness, your house bears bitter fruit.  When we look around at the world and only see the rain clouds, we can’t be surprised when our enthusiasm for life is dampened.  You bloom, or wither, where you are planted – and you get to choose the soil.

         Proverbs 23:7 in a beautiful moment of brisk wisdom simply says, “As a man thinks within himself, so he is.”  The way we choose to think about life is the way our life becomes… and this isn’t some sort of meta-psychology mumbo-jumbo, it is practical and you have experienced it yourself.

         Have you ever been at a party where everyone is laughing and enjoying themselves and maybe, on the outside, you might even be laughing at the same jokes, listening to the same upbeat conversations, and indulging in the same scrumptious food… but your heart isn’t there.  You just heard bad news or your expectations for the day hadn’t been met or someone you love is suffering in a distant hospital, or perhaps you just don’t feel like you fit in and so your heart screams “Impostor” the whole time.  Same party, same people, same food… but as you think within yourself so you are – different experience.

         Life is processed through the filter of our perspective and worldview.  This is why Jesus says, “The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light that is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

         How we see the world – the eye – is also how we filter the world around us.  You may have heard the phrase, the eye is the window to the soul… but there is a literal medical truth to that poetic turn of phrase. The eye is the only non-invasive way for physicians to see the neurological system – the optic nerve connects directly to the brain.  Literally, our eyes are a window into the brain.  Your eyes, whether good or bad, are the first filter for information from the outside.

         And that filter matters – how do I filter the information about the world I am living in will decide what I see.  If I want to live in a lovely world, I will look for lovely things.  If I don’t filter out the bitter and sinful things, then I will see a bitter and dark world.

         1 Corinthians 13 says that “Love believes all things. Love hopes all things” If we are going to love better, we need to be hopeful and we need to believe that good eventually conquers evil.  This isn’t foolish or naïve, this is a chosen worldview.  We love better when we dwell on better things.

         So today, I choose not to be Simon.  I’m not going to dwell in bitterness, pain, and sorrow.  I will feel those things, I will pray about those things, and then I will choose to move on to the good news instead.  I’m sure the stock market is doing something and the politicians are still talking… but my mind is in Santa Cruz.  I’m going to put my toes in the sand, watch the waves, and continue to dwell on the 411 about Otter 841… and secretly, I’m pulling for her.  Long live the Otter Pirate.

         Learn to love better – learn to dwell on what is lovely.  See the world through hopeful eyes.  Filter your information flow.  You choose the house you dwell in.

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And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”