Tonight at youth group we talked about the last year and what God has done. I don't know how much any of the kids in the group got out of it, but as I thought about the last year I realized that God is doing exactly what I asked him to do.
During the last semester I spent a lot of time wondering why nothing was happening in my life, and when I sat down to think about the last year I was completely overwhelmed when I realized that everything has been happening. God has been teaching me, almost exactly since January of last year, how to love people. Not the people far away whose pictures make my heart actually hurt, but usual, every day people. The ones that are hard to love. The ones that I don't know how to love. The ones that I have to love if I am to really love orphans, widows, prostitutes, and the desperately poor and sick.
What about friends who are hard to spend time with? What about kids in the youth group who annoy me to no end? What about my own family? What about the people in my church who have huge, glaringly obvious (to me) blindspots? What about the people who have hurt me the most?
Those are the very people that I have always told God I wanted to love, and this year he has given me exactly what I asked for by teaching me what love looks like. It's inconvenient, and stressful, and messy, and painful, and most of all humbling.
But the point is that this is what I asked for.
How can God be so good?
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1 comment:
You forgot horrible roommaties! What about that one?
Wise old woman, I like your soul.
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