Jessica: Even Now

I couldn't think of an intro to this blog, except to say that it’s about God’s love, and it’s been on my mind for a while now.  I hesitate making these thoughts public, because after rereading it I noticed how bad of a light I put myself in, and I don’t want to sound like a truly horrible person or that I think poorly of myself.  But maybe I should just try to not be a truly horrible person whenever I can, and then no matter what light I am in people will see God in me.  That’s the hope anyway.

In my 22 years of life God has given me glimpses of his eternal, unconditional love—that is, when I allow him to.  The call to love as God loves is such an important call, and I think that to be able to have a love like this is so important for what God wants me to do right now that he is desperately trying to show me what this love is really like, so that I may show it to other people.

I am what they call a “career missionary,” meaning that loving people and leading them to Christ—that’s supposed to be my full-time job.  I say supposed to be because I fail at it every single day.  But with every failure, I am learning more and more, and growing ever so slightly.

Guess what?  I don’t know how to love people the way Jesus does.  I look at people and see their shortcomings, and then I judge them.  I discover things about people, and instead of loving them when they really need it, I allow my disappointment to push them away.

When your “career” is supposed to be about making relationships and loving people more deeply, you just naturally find out the hard truth about them—they aren’t perfect.  Do you know how much easier it is to love something that’s perfect?  Imperfection is messy, and more time-consuming, and more hurtful.  It also involves a certain amount of vulnerability, to be willing to see the brokenness and to be willing that your brokenness be seen.  Maybe that’s why I have trouble letting many people truly get close to me; I’m afraid they will see me for who I really am, and then, when they know the whole disappointing, imperfect truth, they will push me away.  I do it to other people, so how can I expect people to treat me any differently?

Tell me if you can relate to this: you have a job, or you go to school, or you walk into Walmart, and you see all the people around you.  In your head you can grasp that every one of these people has a story, has a life.  They have experienced pain and joy, tears and laughter, just like you have.  And yet in your heart you can turn off the desire to get to know them better.  You can view them as one-dimensional, which is easy because then you don’t have to deal with their undesirable stuff.  They can just be the guy at the desk next to yours, or the woman talking on the phone in the restaurant. 

But something happens when you start following Christ.  He isn’t satisfied with one dimension.  He wants you to see people as he sees people.  Do you know how he sees people?

Anyone who has been a human for a few years can tell you that all humans are despicable creatures who get everything wrong.  Everything they do is destructive, if not to others, then definitely to themselves.  But that’s not what Christ sees.  He sees something beautiful in the terrible; something worthy of being loved, being redeemed.  And that is what he wants us to see in others.

Damn.

Things were a lot easier when I kept my crap to myself and pretended everyone else didn’t have any.

Sometimes, after I have managed to screw up the same thing for the hundredth time, I sit in the cover of darkness surrounded by my broken mess and cry out to the only person to whom I dare show my face: “Do you still love me, even now?  Can you still love me, even after I caused so much pain, even after I looked you right in the eye and turned so willingly away?  Do you love me even now?”

And with infinite love and grace, God whispers back with an impossible tenderness, “Even now.”  And suddenly I’m back from the brink; I can move back into the light, I can live another moment with a forgiveness I could never deserve.

And now that I am beginning to grasp just a tiny strand of God’s love for me, I am given the responsibility again, but now more fervently: share this love with others.

With each hurt I receive from someone as a result of their brokenness, I now hear God asking me gently, “Do you love him even now?”  The call to love has almost broken me, but now, more quickly than before, my feelings of hurt and distrust are replaced with a love that I can’t explain, a gentleness that could only come from God.  Suddenly, for the briefest of moments, God allows me to see people exactly (well, probably not exactly) how he sees them without my humanness to interfere, and it’s unbelievable.  You know the verse in 1 Peter that says “Love covers a multitude of sins”?  I can’t believe how true that is.  But give it a shot, and I guarantee you that the depth of God’s love will overwhelm you. 

I can say that I love people now more deeply than I ever was capable of before, and this time next year I am sure I will be able to say the same thing.  But more importantly, I am discovering every day just how much God loves people.  I hope as I walk through life with him people will see that love in me, and maybe they will learn more about his love because of it.