The Finest Thing I've Ever Known

I am really easily bored.

I hate reading what I've read 1,000 times before.

Why is all Christian writing the same? Why does everybody always think that their interpretation is the most profound? Why can't people be real? I always feel like I'm reading from the same old script with the same old rehashed lessons. The same trite life advice and cheesy prosperity stories.

And I'm tired of listening. I want to see. Because if people were authentically living the Gospel instead of telling me to live it,then the world would look different.

Authentic Christianity doesn't need more pulpits. It needs more disciples, more laborers- to borrow a phrase from Christ Himself.

And even though the word laborers conjures up a sneer in our society or maybe even overtones of a mindless slavery (or even a foolhardy waste of freedom made only by the exceedingly ignorant) I choose it. And I pray for the grace to continuously choose it every moment of my life, both temporal and eternal. Let me be the happiest of fools. Because pride is blinding. It keeps you from seeing that to be the servant of God is to serve love itself. And I don't think that Christian love begins with service (gasp!) I know all the works gospels and modern ideas of social responsibility, but that is not where love begins.

Love begins from the source of love: God. And Christianity begins as a true response to the love God first shows for you. Yes, I'm implying that true Christian service begins by letting Christ serve you. By saying yes to His love and letting Him get close to you and heal you of your sin, all your hurts and broken pieces. That's what consoles His heart. This is how He loves not just you, but each person you've ever encountered. And imagine if we joined Him in that, in loving like that. We can't do it on our own. We're too selfish, too flawed. Too human.

But if we let God love us, suddenly we are free of that selfishness (granted over time) and ultimately redeemed from our own humanity that keeps us in bondage to our lower, less noble nature.

And as I've tried to let God do this to me, to love me transform me, and redeem me I've noticed something interesting happening to me. The first thing I want to do with this new freedom is to love God back, to share this love, to serve like He does.

Because this is the essence of love. Real love. A mutual, self-giving service. And it's the finest thing I've ever known.