..also bluegrass, bicycles, and being home.
Part 2
I suffer from apathy. This is a pretty huge problem on many levels...but especially critical when your job is based on feeling passionate about a need in the lives of other people. And it's not necessarily that I don't care at all. But I definitely don't care enough. I mean, there are lots of things we say we care about. I care about the environment. I care about political activism. I care about homelessness. I care about nuclear warfare. I care about being healthy and buying locally and getting out of debt. But we all have priorities...and things we really, really care about. Things that affect the way we live and the decisions we make.
So when it comes to the kids that I work with, I frequently feel convicted that I don't care as much as Jesus wants me to. I love them, but I know I am usually complacent with my love for them. Complacent with their hearts. And when I really think about it, complacency is not okay.
I don't think Christ is complacent in his love for me. I don't think he's okay with me being where I'm at. I know that he loves me...right where I am...no small print, no strings attached, no prerequisites. But that love -true love- is only love if it desires more for me. A parent loves their child immensely, just how they are in the present, but still desires change and growth and victory over struggles. Therefore, I'm thinking that's how he wants me to love other people. A love that is not content with the current state of affairs.
This is a love that is a bit foreign to our human way of thinking.
So, in the last year, I've found myself praying over and over and over again for God to help me not be complacent. To see people the way he sees people. To love people the way he loves people. To break my heart for the things his heart breaks for.
Just a little tip...don't pray for something like a broken heart without first considering the consequences. That is what I did. Because to be honest, when I prayed for those things...the seeing people and loving people and broken heart stuff...all stuff that sounds quite noble, I prayed for those things for that reason: because they sounded noble. I didn't give any serious thought to what the ramifications of such a request might be. I also didn't take God very seriously...I think I was thinking he wasn't going to deliver.
I was wrong.
Sometimes I imagine what God might be saying when he's working in my life...and this time it went something like this: "Oh, so you want to know what it feels like to love people? What it feels like to really love people who are hurting and broken and running from their only source of hope and freedom and light? Okay. Fine. I'll give you just a teeny, tiny glimpse...because that's all you can handle."
So just for the record...broken hearts hurt. They suck. For the first time in my life, over the last few weeks, I have felt a sincere, urgent sympathy and compassion and broken-ness and love for some of the kids I work with. I have wept and lost sleep and been discontented with their current state of affairs. With their need for Christ. And it has been a very good thing.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not cured of apathy. And I'm not claiming to suddenly have this superhuman ability to love people just like Jesus loves them. Like I said earlier, I think it's just this little sliver of what Christ's love is like. But if this is just a sliver, can you imagine the immensity of his love for us?
"This is but the fringes..." Shane & Shane
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