Motivation

What makes people do the things that they do? What is it that motivates people? What makes you get out of bed in the morning? As I was watching the Olympics a couple of weeks ago these questions were going through my mind a bit. What really struck me was the respect that interviewers and commentators had for the athletes who had devoted so much of their lives to the goal of competing at the Olympics, and perhaps to winning a medal. Now the Paralympics have started and we hear even more amazing stories of people overcoming huge obstacles to achieve their ambitions and dreams. These guys are seriously motivated.

In the reading we had from Romans, Paul is writing about what motivates people who follow Jesus. It seems to me that that there are two themes, or big ideas, that Paul wants to get across. He uses examples of the kinds of behaviour that Christians aspire to or should avoid, but he uses these examples not for their own sake, but in order to tell his readers something about our motivations, about the underlying reasons that we live the way that we live. There are two big ideas that Paul wants to get across. The first is to do with love and the second is to do with recognising the time that we are living in.

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