Love, love, love, love, etc.

I saw this guy walking the other day, just walking down the street with a Rasta cap on. And from the instant I saw him, I thought he was Rastafarian. Maybe I was wrong. Who knows.

In the mall on Friday, I saw a woman in a complete burqa, nothing but her eyes showing. Obviously, I thought, a Muslim.

On my drive home from that same mall, I noticed a bunch of weathered old men sitting around, talking, brighly-coloured turbans on their head. Sihks, enjoying the weather.

And it occured to me that Christians don’t have any of these things. Wouldn’t it be nice to walk down the street and have people see that you’re a Christian just from something you’re wearing?

I had an epiphany, I think. It’s all right there in the scriptures. We will be known, of course - but not by what we wear. By how we love. Primarily, by how we love eachother.

I forget this all the time. Maybe I think people will know me by my morality. Maybe they’ll know me by my language. Maybe they’ll know me by my excellent, coherent theology.

Maybe. But they should know me by my love. Can you imagine someone treating another person lovingly and being taken immediately for a Christian? Can you? Of course not - you and me, we suck at all this love stuff.

I have this feeling some days, when I know I’m downright cantankerous, or when I forget to speak rebuke with a soft edge, or when I ignore someone hurting. I have this feeling that if I never smoked, drank, cursed, or listened to my loud music, but still didn’t have real love - well, frankly dear, the world wouldn’t give a damn.

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Posted April 23rd, 2005 in main.

3 comments:

  1. faith:

    AMEN To the love…and yet the amount of division in the church is crazy! We are often too busy pointing out where everyone is wrong theologicly to embrace them in love. I work at a Christian bookstore and there isn’t alot of love in there. Most of the people who work at this place end up leaving the church becuase of how badly they are treated. Sad!

    http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0877844348/qid=1114353381/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6859661-3124100?v=glance&s=books (I don’t know how to make a dirrect link to Amazon on Blogger)

    Frances Schaeffer has this little book on the verses about knowing we are Christians because of our love. It’s call “mark of a christian”

    April 24th, 2005 at 3:39 am
  2. Scatterfingers:

    Ah! I like Francis Shaeffer… so I’ll have to check this out.

    Thanks for the heads up.

    April 24th, 2005 at 7:07 am
  3. Lara:

    #1 - the new design is spiffy! I like it. I need to figure out some images on mine I think.

    #2 - I was in Golden Gate park a few weeks ago and had extra pizza. I gave it to some guys in the park and they said “Thank you…are you a Christian?” I was totally taken aback at first because I was shocked….but maybe that’s what they mean by knowing we are Christians by our love, even if by “love” you mean “cold pizza”.

    #3 - It took me a long time to get back to this post and comment…I had originally read it on the plane and couldn’t really connect to leave the comment then. Anyway, better late than never. :)

    April 26th, 2005 at 6:36 am

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