Oxford’s definition of passion: a very strong feeling of love, hate, anger, enthusiasm, etc.
The root words for “passion” in Latin and Greek are passio or pathos, respectively, which mean suffering and also love. The original Latin definition of passion meant “enduring” or “suffering.” I This meaning continues in the word “compassion” which means “enduring with” or “suffering with.” This is where we get the idea of the passion of Christ; Jesus suffered for what he loved: US, You and Me.
These days, we use the word passion to describe our feeling for something that we love. It could be a person, it could be a pastime, it could be a food. My four-year-old grandson has a passion for dinosaurs. He sleeps with his stuffed “dino.” He has many books on the subject, and he has memorized them all. He stayed with us over the weekend, and his Poppa took him to see some dinosaurs in Bellevue. He had also seen some dinosaur bones at a park in Utah earlier this summer. He has talked non-stop about those dinosaurs, with such excitement and enthusiasm.
Can you relate? Do you have a passion for something, or does someone you know have a passion for something? I know people who have a passion for the Predators, or the Vols, or the Titans. My father-in-law had a passion for the Chicago Cubs. (So sad that he didn’t live to see them win the World Series in 2016.) Others have a passion for a hobby, or a cause. We just observed the Olympics, and we watched athletes who certainly have a passion for their sport; why else would they devote so much time and money to perfecting their skills.
Many of us, hopefully most, experienced a strong feeling of love and enthusiasm for Jesus when we were first converted to Christianity. I think about this when I read the letter to Ephesus in Revelation 2:4. The church at Ephesus is admonished by John, in a letter dictated by Jesus, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forgotten the love you had at first.” Remember when we couldn’t wait to go to church, to read our Bibles, eager to serve, and wanting to tell everyone about our conversion experience, about our church, our pastor, our new life? Honestly, I still feel like that about Nashville Rescue Mission. I have a passion for this place and the work that is done here, and especially how God is at work through each of you. But for many of us, that original high level of passion fades. We “forget the love we had at first.”
Despite all their good works, God still saw that they had lost their original passion, and He told them “Yet I hold this against you.” Not good. God desires our love, our passion, our worship. How do we keep the passion alive over time? How do we fan the flame? The subject of the next few weekly devotions will be dedicated to keeping the passion alive.
“But they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31).
In Christ,
Judy
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