Hi.
So a few things have occurred to me in my meditation time this week and out of that, I have a challenge that I want to give you that I hope will give you a different perspective on how you look and see at the people around you who might not necessarily see things the way you see them.
What made me think so much was a question I was asked by someone I consider a dear mentor and friend regarding a mutual friend. What I was asked is this; “If you are not there for a friend when they are in need, who do you expect to be there? How will you then feel if they are given help that has conditions and they are then in a trap. How will you fill?” To be honest it cut me a bit given the distorted way with which at times I view and have the wrong value for the people around me-(a way now I can liken to a thousands pieces of coloured glass.
It then occurred to me that this is how we treat the world as the church. Where they need love, acceptance and to just feel a sense of purpose of belonging we have turned our eyes away in condemnation and in judgment. We see them addicted to sin, flocking to beer-halls for some quick fun, doing the porcupine dance in whatever remains of what they call male-female relationship and even moreso sleeping around in search of fun and passion and in shame we turn away and want nothing to do with them. Through the pain of experience many a person gets to find out that all they do never really lasts, that it is a continual search that can never find a conclusion; the perennial case of the donkey and the carrot.
We do not see their lives for what they really are, a scarlet letter of pain wrought out of a thousand trials of searching for joy, peace and true love and to enjoy life and as such we do not step in with the answer. We do not realise that the people who do not know God are in need of an answer, that they long to know where to find joy, peace and lasting happiness and that we the people of God have the answer to all the questions and things they seek. And as a result, the scarlet letter is left to rot on the outskirts, a forgotten plea that fell on deaf ears-and as opportunistic as always the devil steps in to lead them even more astray, to blind their eyes even more and wreak in their lives an even greater kind of havoc.
My brothers; we are the people of God, a royal priesthood and a holy nation. We are the body of Christ and we are made in His image; born again to shew forth the works of His marvellous light. And if I may ask, what is the work of God? My friend God is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love: He is not a God to always accuse nor will He harbour His anger forever. He is Joy, He is peace and He is quick to forgive-His express nature, we have seen in who Christ is. And now the baton is in our hands-to continue the work that Christ left for us; to love an unlovely world, to forgive those who wrong us and to live lives that through which the world will see the love of God and freely come.
So today I give you a challenge: to see the lives that the world lives as a scarlet letter and to realise that if we do not give them the answer, they will find themselves in more and more of a dark place. But if we rise, if we become who God intended for us to be then we will see the lost come home to the place of love for which they were born.
Be Blessed.