With any good defining moment about the Lord we learn about our own suckyness, to be profoundly prolific. Wow, am I aware of my sin, my selfishness, and my obsession with things I can see. I'm currently in a position I've never found myself to be in before. I'm the minority. I'm not one in a sea of large tank tops and nike shorts. I'm not one in a crowd of people with families that have come out to support their athletic children. And I'm definitely not one in a congregation of people that worship the same Maker. I am thirsty, I am weak, and I am so naturally wrong.
God loves everyone. Easy. Done. Got it. Now Elaina... go love everyone because God loves everyone. Okay! Wait.. Hard. Can't. Won't.
We talk about "loving" on people so much that it has become a part of my vocabulary and mindset similarly to talking about eating brunch. Still I never really know when brunch happens or why it's not more defined and what kind of food it means we're actually going to eat. I want to love people because I know that I am loved and I know that they are loved. But why is it so much harder to love these people than ever before? Because now they don't look like me. They don't think like me. They do things contradictory to what I believe. They've been burned by people like me. They actually should and maybe do despise me. I've been in rooms where the entire point of a lesson is contradictory to what I believe is true about the identity of a person. I believe it is more than who you are attracted to, what groups you identify with, or what country your ancestors came from. I believe identity is breathed into you from the same One that created you. I'm tempted to throw doctrine and scripture and opinions into the room. Then I think to myself, if the Son of Man were sitting at the table across the room during these conversations what's he going to say? It's sure going to look and sound a lot different than what I naturally declare.
I want to get on a soap box and discuss the different theories about identity. I want to expose how sexual identity is destroying the most precious gift we've been given. I want to defend. And then I want to attack. Is this that whole "loving people" thing we always talk about? Is this what it means to be the aroma of Christ? As I look over at the empty seat I hear Him in a gentle way catch my attention. I see Him lift His hands into the air and gently say stop using those eyes. Then I see them. The holes in His hands. The two lenses through which He sees, and the same ones that I don't have to pay a quarter to look through. The grace. The real definition of loving people. To honor and to give grace as Jesus gives grace. It is the only way I can understand what loving people really means. To put the armor down and instead grab a hand that looks different than yours and hold onto it because you know you once needed a hand too. If I can give my hand to hold, to meet them at the hurt, then hopefully they will catch a glimpse of the hol(e)y hands that are calling them home. There is a lot of injustice and a lot of what I'm doing here is working against that, but when I forget that I don't breathe compassion and grace naturally then I am enlarging the gap between each of us rather than scooting closer and closer.
Brothers and sisters, let us love. But let us love not on the authority of "christianity" or the cause of justice or ministry. Let us love because we did nothing to get ourselves to where we are. Someone showed us the holes in the hands of Christ. So let us move forward and see that He is on the other side of the river giving us the strength to step across as we keep our gaze on Him, and we have no idea whose eyes are seeing the hands that we are sharing.
