Anyone who is deeply involved in ministry has faced this dilemma: when you get involved with people’s lives, their mess gets all over you. For months I’ve been irritated by that particular fact. I don’t want to enter into the sorrow, the fear, the trust required when only God can save. I don’t want to have someone else’s dirt on my shoes.
No, I want it to go the other way. I want to shine a light, bring healing and clean smells. I want my “sanitized life” to disinfect their life. I want their life to change, to smell better, to work better. I want to see concrete proof that entering into their life has made things better. Please give me pretty Christmas lights and happy feelings, not seasonal depression and blind faith.
It doesn’t work that way.
This week the heaviness of some of the people around me is just weighing down my heart and mind. Sometimes I can hardly breathe with it. But that was the choice I made when I put their arms around my shoulders and said “I’ll walk with you.”
Incarnation. God with us.
It feels different to me, now. He hung out in some of the worst of our dirt so that he could be with us. Maybe he wanted pretty Christmas lights, too, and got a stable full of manure. I know he wanted pretty lights, because he couldn’t resist the whole angels singing in the field thing. But really, he just got to be with us in our muck. Emmanuel. Incarnational. God with US.
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I love your honesty! It’s so refreshing…..but that’s why I love
you…you’re so real.
Yup.
The idea of Immanuel impacted me greatly a few years ago, probably redeemed Christmas for me. But these thoughts here take it even a bit farther. Thanks as always.
If only more of God’s children would realize that part of the wonder of the incarnation is that it is God’s perfect example of what He desires from the “body of Christ”…to physically, relationally reach out to those who need to be saved. Press on toward the prize!
Now this one really tells it like it is! Thanks Marla for sharing your thoughts with us. The thought that God
never leaves us during the messes and dirt of our lives
is so simple yet oh so profound. I think we sometimes see
some of the dirt in our lives and think we aren’t prepared
to give anyone help. It’s the opposite. I feel cleaner when
I do something for someone else. It’s like dirt falls off
each time I show God’s love by touching someone elses life.
Thank you Jesus!
I can really relate to what you’re talking about here. It’s hard to be alongside people in their pain and the mess of the world. It’s hard to allow yourself to be caught up in it and realise that that’s exactly the place you’re meant to be.
It must delight God’s heart that that’s what you are doing just now.