Happy New Year!
This is the first of a ten-part series on learning to love with your whole heart.
Nazi invasions, refugees, an $850,000 estate, and a lesson in gratitude.
"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"
New episodes drop on Tuesdays.
Happy New Year!
This is the first of a ten-part series on learning to love with your whole heart.
Nazi invasions, refugees, an $850,000 estate, and a lesson in gratitude.
"Remember, you are loved, so go, love better!"
New episodes drop on Tuesdays.
I’m Scott Beyer and welcome to 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.
It is a brand-new year, and an opportunity to try new things, meet new people, get better at life, start afresh, and chase your passions. And here on the podcast that’s true, too. I took a six-week hiatus at the end of the year to spend time with family, get organized for 2024, and make plans to make the most of the days ahead.
And with that in mind, let’s talk about what Love Better has in store for this year. Throughout 2024, we are going to explore the two greatest commandments. Love the Lord and Love your neighbor. These two commands are the structural I-beam that the entire shelter of Christianity hangs from, and when Jesus commanded them, He got specific. He said, “Love the Lord your God with all your HEART, SOUL, MIND, and STRENGTH – this is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it, love your neighbor as yourself.” The two greatest commands in the history of the world are to LOVE BETTER, and more specifically, to love God and man better in four different areas. From the Heart, with your soul, using your mind, and leveraging your strength. This year on the podcast, we are going to explore all four of those areas. Heart, soul, mind, and strength, and how to love better.
That all begins with a ten-part series on Heart Love that starts today. We will do what we always do, explore history, science, pop culture, and connect it all to biblical themes that help us love better. Also, sprinkled throughout we are going to have some interviews with experts in various fields that can help us be better. New episodes will drop on Tuesdays, just like last year. I hope you enjoy it, but more importantly, I hope you find value that you can utilize in your day-to-day life because love isn’t something to be studied academically, it is something to be practiced in our relationships. I don’t just want you to learn to love better, I want you to listen and then live out that love in your life – with your friends, your children, your spouses, in your churches, in your communities, and especially in your relationship with God. Life is complicated, people are messy, and because of that, love is necessary. So, without any further adieu, I present you the first episode of Heart Love by introducing you to the Petrasek family.
$847,215.57. In April 2015, the US Treasury Department received a cashier’s check for that exact amount from the estate of Peter and Joan Petrasek. Joan Petrasek had passed away in 1998 from breast cancer, and Peter survived her living another fifteen years before leaving this earth at the age of 85. Both of their wills contained the exact same stipulation – all of their worldly possessions were to be liquidated and the proceeds given to the United States government. Three years after Peter’s death, their estate’s attorney found herself writing a check for almost 850,000 dollars to Uncle Sam. Not for back taxes, not for debt owed… but merely out of gratitude to a country that had accepted Peter and Joan as citizens.
You see, Peter and Joan Petrasek were immigrants, and Peter, at least was a refugee. Peter Petrasek was born Vlastimil Petrasek in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Amongst his effects at the time of his passing was found a creased document with an official-looking stamp of a lion – a school report card from his childhood in Czechoslovakia.
Peter would have been twelve when the Nazis invaded the country. In details gathered from neighbors and friends, Peter’s family was devastated by the German invasion. Their property was confiscated, Peter’s father was hauled off to a work camp, his mother was left in Prague, his sister was involuntary made to work in a factory in Dresden where she died in one of the bombings in that city. Peter Petrasek was conscripted into a youth camp associated with the German Air Force, also known as the Luftwaffe. During WW2, the Nazis trained luftwaffenhelfers, child soldiers – it is likely that is what happened to Peter. A child without father or mother, forced into a war on behalf of a country he had no claim to.
The details from there are sparse, but Peter survived the war (including a plane crash in the Swiss Alps), and in 1949, from the US Zone of Germany received official classification by the United States as a “refugee”. In case you were wondering, under United States law, a refugee is classified as someone who is located outside of the United States, is of special humanitarian concern, demonstrates that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group, and is not firmly resettled in another country. Peter matched all the criteria.
So, 85 years later, Peter, having lived a comfortable life in three-bedroom, two-bathroom home of East Kenyon Street in West Seattle, bequeathed all he had left to the government of the United States of America.
So, what does that have to do with love from the heart? Everything, because the heart isn’t the part of us we think with, it is the part we feel with, and Peter Petrasek felt gratitude for a country that had given him a very different life than the conscripted life of a child soldier. Logically, how much would $850,000 do to stave off the U.S. debt – not much. As of right now, the US government spends that much money every 7 seconds. Gifting that money to the US Treasury wasn’t a head decision, it was a heart one.
So, if you want to learn how to love God and love your neighbor with all your heart, you are going to need to find gratitude. Gratitude is the fuel that drives heartfelt love. Until your heart gets grateful, it doesn’t get involved.
That is why the same Bible that says, “pray without ceasing” also says that when we pray we should “be watchful in it with thanksgiving”. Never stop praying, but in that praying, never stop being grateful. When Paul wrote to the Colossian Christians, he would go so far as to tell them,
“ Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:6-7)
You notice the adjective associated with thanksgiving? Abounding. Our gratitude and thankfulness should be abounding – overflowing the boundaries of normalcy. If we want to love with our whole heart, we are going to need to be abnormally grateful. The kind of gratitude that spills over the top of the dam and floods our hearts… and that sort of gratitude is a choice… and it is most beautifully seen in one of the darkest moments in human history – Jesus’ Last Supper.
On a Thursday night, Jesus gathered around a table to eat the Passover, an annual Jewish feast, with His twelve apostles. We call it the Last Supper because it was the last meal Jesus would eat before being crucified. After leaving that meal, Jesus went to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, from there He was betrayed by Judas, one of the same twelve men He ate the meal with, be handed over to a torch and sword-wielding mob, and eventually be beaten, stabbed, scourged, and nailed to a roughhewn wooden cross where He would hang until there was no more breath in Him.
So, at this final meal – this Last Supper, what does it say that He did before eating? I quote from Luke chapter 22:
He said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."
And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He said, "Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes."
And He took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is My body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of Me." (Luke 22:15-19)
It is a small detail, but vitally important, Jesus, as He ate His last meal with those twelve men, including one who would betray Him, gave thanks for the food. He found something to be grateful for. Instead of focusing on all the evil that swirled around Him, He focused on the good that was right in front of Him and the good that would come from His death.
If Jesus can find gratitude in a moment like that, then I can find things to be thankful for in my life, too. It can be done, but it must be done intentionally. Frustration, irritation, anxiety, apathy, and general selfishness come a lot easier than gratitude. I can see the worst in the world without hardly trying… but as Jesus broke that bread and passed it around the table – He found things to feel grateful about. His heart was full of optimism, not bitterness.
And this pattern is true in the life of Peter Petrasek, too.
Peter and Joan had much to be sorrowful about. By all accounts, Peter lived a solitary life once his wife passed. They never had children, nor did they have any extended family to speak of. Their neighbor was the executor of their will because, well, he was the closest they had to family. Peter could easily have chosen bitterness, but it seems he didn’t. He chose gratitude. He made the news in 2015 as a “feel good story” because his gift of gratitude was inspiring. By the way, feel good stories are also one of those things that are only found intentionally. It seems, even the news, only chooses happy when it has to.
Look into any heart that truly loves and you will find gratitude. That’s especially true with worship. You and I both know where you should be on a Sunday – you should be with the church – we should go to worship. But I know plenty of times that I’ve been at worship, but I didn’t love worship. I checked the box of attendance, but checked my heart out. I’m not proud of it, I’m just being honest about the reality that being at worship and being worshipful aren’t the same thing. If you are struggling with church attendance – maybe it is because your heart isn’t in it. After all, in that same letter to the Colossians where Paul talked about abounding in thanksgiving, he also wrote:
“Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (Col 3:16-17)
The most important melody in worship is found in your heart, and what chord does God tell you to play? Sing with thankfulness.
If you are looking to revitalize your worship – bring back gratitude. Intentionally approach worship with gratitude. Intentionally approach God with a thank you first. From the air you breath to the comfortable shoes that you wear to the people in your life – these are all generous favors and bright lights in a dark world given to us by God. Worship should reflect a heart that has counted those graces.
After all, we will all eventually go the way of Peter Petrasek and we can have spent our lives counting up the sorrows and filling our hearts with the injustices against us (and nobody would have blamed him if he had), or we can find a better way to feel. Train your heart to say thank you and you won’t just have good manners; you will have a good life.
Perhaps we do it wrong every New Year’s. Instead of making a list of things we want to change, let’s make a list of the things we are grateful we already have.
Learn to love better. Learn to love with all your heart. Learn to love gratefully.
If you've listened this far, hopefully we've done something to help make your life a little bit better. Would you mind returning the favor and helping us by subscribing to the podcast through your favorite platform?
By sharing with others or leaving a review on Apple Podcast, you help us reach more people. Also, if you want more information about the work I'm doing at Eastland, visit us at eastlandchristians.org or my personal Bible site, Biblegrad.com, where you can sign up for daily Bible devotionals called Biblebites and receive them in your email each morning, take online Bible classes, or find videos that will help you study through the Bible throughout the year.
And until next time, “Remember, you are loved, so go… love better.”