Something has been mulling around in my mind for awhile now.
I'm writing this blog because a sermon I saw this morning has really helped to put to words the things that have been on my mind. Here it is:

The religious leaders of Jesus' time really weren't an unusual lot. Really, they were pretty normal. They were logical, even.
They complained that Jesus hung out with tax-collectors and sinners.


Wouldn't most of us do the same thing if we saw our brother or sister doing the something similar? Let me explain.
If I went to a club and hung out there without the title of "OUTREACH" blinking on my forehead, what sort of things would people say?
If I spent alone time with a pimp, what kinds of things would people think?
Who cares why I did it. Who cares what was said, even. Those things wouldn't matter. What would really matter is what it looks like happened. Because what it looks like happened could ruin my reputation as a God-loving christian.

There are three stories that Jesus' tells the religious leaders in response to this complaint.
He tells them the story of a Shepherd who loses one sheep out of a hundred and leaves the ninety-nine to go find the one.
He tells the story of a woman who loses one coin and ransacks her whole house to find it.
He tells the story of a father who loses a son to immorality, and when the son finally comes home and offers himself as a servant instead of a son, embraces him before he could even finish his offer.

All three throw parties to celebrate finding what they'd lost. And All three are absolutely illogical.
To risk 99 sheep and then throw a party that probably cost more than the one sheep alone. To leave 9 coins and ransack a home, tearing everything apart to find the one, then throw a party that probably cost more than that one lost coin alone.

And then the son...the one story that we can, most of us, relate to more than the other two stories.
The son. The one who was once lost returns home and seeks to earn his name again.

But parents know that no child can ever earn their last name. Children are born into it, they are given it, and given everything that comes with it. The food they eat, the clothes they wear, everything. And whether they do bad or good, they are their parents. they belong to their family.

How many of us get this? I'm not to earn my name.
How many of us are shifting uncomfortably in the Father's arms, trying to finish our speech about how we want to fix our mess-ups, when there is nothing left to fix.

God's logic is so different from our own. It doesn't make sense.
I want you to read it again.
God's logic doesnt make sense.

Stop it. Just stop doing what you think pleases Him. Be in His arms, and stop moving.

Realize that that's where you belong.
I am who He says I am, simply because He says so.
I am who I am because He is who He is.
And He is truth.

He says I am beautiful, I am His, I am loved. I am unique. I am cherished.

Those three stories aren't about the coin, or the sheep, or even the lost son.
They are about the Shepherd, the Woman, and the Father.
They are about the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and how they feel about you and me. It's about their heart, Beloved.
You may think that you aren't special. that maybe you are one of the 99 sheep that God has left. That when He says that He loves you, He means a collective 'you', a general 'you'.

But listen.

Listen.

When He looks for you, he looks for you. And nothing else, no one else, will do.
When He looks for you, it's because He knows you, and He feels the pain of losing you more than anyone. 

It's not about a number to God, like it is to us.

It's not about a title to God, like it is to us.

His measuring scale is so different because no one can fill your spot in His heart but you. The missing coin is so important to the woman because she knows the coin and so she knows what she's lost. That coin may be worth less than the party she throws after finding it, but to her that coin is worth every single penny, and more. 

He crushed His son for you. His son was crushed for you. 
Your sin does not intimidate Him because

It. Is. Finished.

Crazy Ranting From a Crazy Person.

I don't even know where to begin.

I'm crazy. I'm absolutely crazy.

I have almost no money to my name. I'm living in a new city with next to no connections.

I feel as though the only thing left to my name is my name.

The only thing I can have control of is the the way I appear in other people's eyes.

I don't mean that I care about what everyone thinks of me. Honestly I could care less about most people's opinion of me...but it's the opinion of  the people I love that I care most about upholding.

I want to prosper; I want to further myself; I want to do all of the things that are respectable in life, for the sake of their respect...I have that insane need to prove myself to them.

You know, I've noticed something. There's an extent of sacrifice that is acceptable to even Christian standards. One can give up things, so long as they keep making money in turn- as long as they have security themselves.

Is that so unreasonable a thing to ask, God? That I can have at least a small assurance of security; it doesn't have to be much, just enough to live by- just enough to be seen as respectable. Even if it's under the title of "poor for the name of Christ." At least it's a title.

Can't I at least have a title?

The thing that sucks about a title is that it's just something to feed. It's something to serve instead of serving Christ. And the tricky thing is, a title can have the name of Christ in it, and the appearance of good underneath it.

God I'm done with titles. If you want me to be poor, okay (here goes my support ha- told you I was crazy).

There are seasons of prosperity and seasons poverty, so to speak. Paul knew the secret of being content in each, and I can't help wishing that I understood his secrets as well as he did.

 But I think one of the secrets was his desire to serve God above everything else; no matter how great the cost.

He spent his life traveling and with no money. He spent his life suffering.

His motive wasn't to go as far as inspiring and challenging people. It was to go farther.
In fact, his motive wasn't about people at all. It was about God, and pleasing Him.

That's the goal, isn't it? To please God?

Not everyone pleases God by living a life like Paul's. One could try and end up not pleasing Him because they didn't become who God made them to be.

The life of Paul was Paul's life- no one else's.

The way to please God is to become who He created me to be. Oddly enough, the way to do it isn't by becoming independent, but just the opposite. The way to become who I'm created to be, I've learned, is to surrender everything to God and be obedient to Him. 

It's hard to do...sometimes I forget that God has my best interest at heart. I always think that the people who are over me have nothing but their own interests at heart.

But that's not true of God.

His death proves that it never was true for Him.

He didn't want to suffer and die. Anyone who reads about His death knows that. But He did it, because His own interests didn't come first. 

He put His Father's first, knowing that His Father's will was to reconcile us to Him. His Father's heart was for us.

Now Jesus is in Authority. He is literally ruler of all; whether it's acknowledged by everyone yet or not.

Crazy, His heart is for me. He is my authority- He even has the heart of kings in His hands. He is the ultimate authority.

So when I submit to Him, He makes me more into the person He made me to be. For some people that means having nothing. But does it matter? We're supposed to have everything given up and over to Him, anyway. It's not like it was really ours to begin with.

I start out like everyone else. But the more I give my life and submit to Him the more unique I become; the more different my life becomes.

Truth be told, what happens in this life isn't as important as what happens in the next. No matter what suffering comes in this life, I know my title in the next. I know my place in eternity.

C.S. Lewis said once, "anything that's not eternal is eternally useless." So as much as I'd just love to build my kingdom here, even just a little bit, the only real peace I get is from living for the next one by trusting the One leading me now.

God has a plan. He knows the plans that He has for me.

Ha. That doesn't mean that I know the plans, dang it. Sometimes I wish I did...sometimes I wish I could see what He's up to.

He's told me that He's got miracles in store this year. But the thing about miracles is- surprise, surprise- they're miraculous. Meaning we can't even expect them to happen.

Which to an extent, sucks, because it means that I have to trust more and understand less.

Before the masterpiece, there's nothing but an empty canvas; a block of clay no different from all the other blocks of clay.

The most mold-able clay, as we all know, is the softest. It's the stuff that's most yielding in the hands of the potter's touch, though he should cut it and shape it in a way that makes no sense to anyone but himself.

Believe in Him Anyway.

    When God calls us to the impossible and reveals that what He has for us is impossible, don't be afraid. God knows more than we do about the impossible. He made the impossible. When Abraham in the Bible was told by God that he would bear a son, he didn't look at his old age or his frail body and tell God that it'd be impossible. Instead he pressed further and deeper into his relationship with Him, and left the promise where it was.

     This is how I want to respond to what God has put before me now- I want to press deeper and further into my relationship with Him, and instead of telling Him that what He has for me is impossible, I'm going do what Abraham did and I'm going to leave at His feet.

    Faith doesn't always happen without fear. Sometimes it's the response to what we fear. Sometimes it's what drives us to God's feet, and it doesn't always mean that we're not afraid in the process. It just means that we choose to believe Him anyway.

Pondering a Memory

Who can say what a person thinks in that moment when reason and logic do not line up with the heart? Compassion...can it be, that at times, it is more logical than reason?

Can reason sometimes be used in a way that excuses a person's choice to not have compassion on another?

I don't know.

All I know is that in that moment I had no reason. I had no answers.

It was a moment that found me under the hot African sun, swatting away flies as I walked single-file behind my friend and interpreter. We turned the corner of a wall and found a mother sitting in a hut that was no bigger than a walk-in closet. It had no doors, no windows, it was nothing but a mud and stick shack.

She sat in ash, next to a small fire with a pot in it. With a wooden spoon she stirred the little flour she had, turning it into a thick substance that turns to rock in the stomach.

African Hospitality would have her invite us in to share the meal with her, but that day she simply had none to give. Little children ran in and out of the hut as we sat in a semi-circle around her, waiting to speak to her about the God-Jesus who loves her. 

I never fully understood the conversations that went on during these door-to-door visits, but what I lacked in  audio attention I made up for in visual.

So as my friend spoke beside me, I simply watched her.

She sat with legs crossed over and listened with an impatient gleam in her eye.

Could I blame her that she did not want to listen?

Would I listen if I were in her place?

Who was she, that she would be with nothing but a small pot of flour to feed her children and herself? And who was I, that I would be without nothing? Without need or want?

Almost a year later to the day I sit in this quiet kitchen with a glass of "pur" water by my side. After a day of health-food shopping and easy cooking, I sit here full and content. Not five feet from me is a fridge full of food to eat on a whim.

This is the truth.  

The truth, bitter and moving as it is, is that I don't know what it's like to eat rocks just to try and satisfy the insatiable gnawing in my stomach and weakness in my bones.

The truth is that I do not know what it's like to go without a choice or preference for food.

I do not know want, I know only greed, which comes after want is filled. I have what I want, and yet I want more.

Why? God, why? Why do we do that? Why do we accumulate for ourselves and yet are never satisfied? That's not the point of life, is it? To gain for ourselves nothing but the feeling of not having enough?

I may have seen starvation and poverty in Africa, but I will never experience in full what it is like. I may have seen it, but at the end of the day I go home to food and water and comfort: things I did not, in a single moment, earn and could not, in a single moment, deserve any more than that woman with her children could.

And yet at the end of the day, after all has been said and done, I feel like the lesser between us. I feel as though she is greater than I. I feel as though she, though among the least of all people now, will be first in the kingdom of God.

I feel it, though I can't explain it. Perhaps it is because when all is said and done she is one of the people I will answer to.  

I came across this realization only after I was honest with the discomfort and sadness that lingered in this memory. When I was honest I realized that if I could, I would get on my knees before her and say that I am so sorry. For some reason that I cannot fathom I would seek her forgiveness.

Perhaps it stems from a guilt that I would have so much more than her, all of which I know that I do not deserve and yet take advantage of on more than a daily basis.

Perhaps I would apologize because I look back on her and a gentle reminder forms in the back of my mind, that I have been given much for a greater purpose than just to serve myself.

That to those who have much, much is due.

Perhaps I would apologize because I have yet to pay it forward.

I would beg her forgiveness because here, in this comfortable society, it looks like I have time to set my heart on doing so.

But the truth is that she doesn't have time. They don't have time. To those without food for tomorrow, today is all they've got. And even that is not a guarantee for any of us. So why would I believe that I have time?

If I could, I know that I would tell her that I'm scared. I'm scared that loving her and people like her might cost me more than what I want to give; more than what's comfortable for me; more than what's "reasonable".

I would tell her the truth- that all this time I have reasoned away my compassion. I have reasoned that to give so much is just not normal for a person like me to do.

And for that, I know I am deeply sorry.

I would apologize because I know that in the face of that woman there is the face of Jesus, and that I might have to answer to Jesus through her eyes one day.

For if we were to come together before Him, would He be looking through her eyes upon the situation, or mine?

The answer lies in another question:

Which one of us was in need?

Which was hungry and not fed?

Who was naked and not clothed?

Who was sick and not taken care of?

And which one of us
Was?

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

“Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.

 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

“Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

“Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

-Mathew 25: 31-46