Good Morning! Nice of You to Drop By!

Some things have an odor from the outside - and you find out that the stink even more on the inside.  Every relationship has ups and downs.  If you think that any relationship - marriage, family or friendships - is all fun and games, you are kidding yourself.  True and lasting relationships are built on hard work and the willingness to stick with the other through the worst of times.  Through this, the best of times are even better.  

            Luke Skywalker was completely committed to the Rebel Alliance by the time they set up base on the ice planet Hoth.  He had grown past the stage of saving a princess and into a young man yearning to throw off the shackles the oppressive Empire.  He is joined on the planet, though not necessarily on the mission, by his good buddy Han Solo.  Han is not a party member of the Rebel Alliance yet, though at this point in the story he could go that way.  He is there with his friends Luke and Leia.  We know what happens next, it's etched in our minds.  After escaping the wampa creature, Luke succumbs to the elements, to be found by Han.  Han was willing to brave the cold to find his friend.  When he did, he would do anything to keep his friend from dying.  This leads to an epic moment.  Did you know that this is the only time in the Star Wars Saga where a non-Force sensitive being wields a lightsaber? 

(OK, you can argue about General Grievous later.)  Han slices open the dead tauntaun in an act that was repeated on my schoolyard every day from December to February for several years.  Han exclaims "And I thought these things smelled bad…from the outside." 

            Do you see what he was willing to go through for a true friend?  Risking his own life and bearing the stench of the innards of a creature for the welfare of the other.  There is the lesson for today.  Our lives have got to be about the other.  Love is not about a collection of events or physical sensations or flutters of the heart.  Love is putting the needs and well-being of someone else above your own.  Staying with SW for a moment, Han goes out into the cold out of love for his friend. 

            Love is the basis for all relationships.  Sometimes it is total abandonment to that love, sometimes it is a small dose of love, and sometimes it is devoid of love.  Nevertheless, when we cease to love our neighbors, we become selfish people.  It is through the self-sacrificial love that is exemplified by Han that he continues even further on his journey toward personal redemption.  This pirate, this smuggler, this outlaw has found a reason to live and better himself.  He learns to love through his commitment to his friends and finds that he has compassion for many more people in the galaxy far, far away.  By the end of Empire Strikes Back, Han is himself left in the cold through the carbonite freezing.  And even   Luke does not do this out of a sense of debt, but out of true friendship that wants to the loved to be blessed.

though he could not have planned it, Luke sets in motion to return love to love, to save his buddy from the deep freeze.