I’m pretty sure the last time I posted a blog was when Carina was born, and that was over 3 months ago. Shame on me.
Not that I’m assuming anyone particularly is hurt by the previous statement, but I have realized that getting my thoughts down in print, whether in a journal or on this blog, is therapeutic. And I could probably use some major therapy about now.
Tomorrow I will leave my family for a week to hang out with almost 1200 high school students (about 30 of which I know personally) to attempt to teach them about Jesus and to do my best to get out of the way so they can have opportunities to see him more clearly. This is a pretty monumental task, really, and it floors me still that a God who created the universe, He of infinite love, grace, and perfection, would trust me and some of my friends (each of us infinitely imperfect) to show Him to them, and them to Him.
And why would God do that? Why would He decide to let humans be His instrument of choice to prove Himself to the world. I’m just saying…If I were God and wanting to prove my existence and love to the world, I probably wouldn’t trust humans so much. It’d be much easier to just write cloud messages to people, making each one personal and specific, leaving no doubt about my existence, and how I cared for humans and the intricate minutiae of their lives.
Instead, though, God picked me and you, not just as the objects of His love, but to be the vehicles of it, too. Let that thought brew for a minute. Pretty incredible, right?
Despite my terrible flaws and imperfections, God wants to use me to show his beauty and perfect love. I can’t wrap my head all the way around it, but I am beginning to see why He would do such a foolish thing. God KNEW that love would be worth it, and that the pursuit of that love is what drives humans at the core.
What that means is that I have to be willing to see through faults, to look past selfishness, pride, conceit, ambition, poor judgement, and self-centeredness in others, and know that God created them by and for love. And if I can do that, then I have to do my best to kill those same things in myself so that others can look at me and see less of those traits and more of His love. And lets be honest…doing those two things ~ seeing God in others AND allowing God to be seen in me ~ is infinitely difficult, but infinitely valuable if we are going to ever experience the infinite love that God has designed us for.
I truly believe that the aim of each human heart is God’s love, and if they are expected to experience even a little bit of that, I am expected to share (despite my faults and to the best of my ability) my experience with that love.
So I would ask that you pray with me that I (and the friends going with me this week) will be able to do just that for a group of high school students that may have NO idea that we are doing just that…putting ourselves aside in order for them to see LOVE more clearly.
praying with you and for you and all that are going.