Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up. Expect God to get here soon. Psalm 31

How does God define bravery? Certainly not like the world. One of my favorite movies, for all of you great-grandfathers out there, is Lonely are the Brave, from 1960, starring Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, Carroll O' Connor, John Cassavettes and Gena Rowland, among others. It is a metaphorical story about the last cowboy who refuses to accept the terms of a world where cars and laws replaced horses and cunning. For most of my life I thought this movie epitomized what it meant to be brave, and to be free.

But God calls us to a different type of bravery. He  calls us to give up not only what the world wants, but what we think we want. He is, after all, the God of love, and while he is perfect in everything, his greatest creation is love. His love is best seen in how he cares for us, how he connects us to him through each other, and most of all, how he does this through his son. What is bravery from God's perspective? Each and every day he waits for each of us to walk with him and love each other through him. This bravery is not solitary, apart from everyone and everything, but connected to each other through his spirit of love.