The last several months have been interesting considering the COVID-19 pandemic, protesting, riots, political unrest, and all the uneasiness that goes with them, but none of it has grabbed me emotionally or rocked me to my core. Don’t get me wrong here. I am saddened at the loss of life, racism, vandalism, economic hardship, and political posturing. It is all terrible. But for me, I can put all of them – and many other things – in the bucket of a broken fallen world. The chaos is to be expected and the law of entropy is still at play, but I can’t shake the feeling that my lack of emotion about those things is somehow incorrect. It is like I am missing something; some thought, new idea, or solution that was just fleeting. It turns out what is missing isn’t an idea. It is action. A very specific kind of action.
It took Christ slapping me and saying, “What took you so long?” via several podcasts, a couple of sentences in a book, a conversation with a friend, and the feeling there is something I am not seeing. I need to get personally involved. I am not talking about passive involvement like giving money (which isn’t bad and very much needed). I am talking about getting down into the trenches with my time and talents and doing something at the individual, family, or small group level where the people I am helping can see and hear me. The world is groaning for more people to get directly involved and show Christ’s love.
There was a story shared on a podcast by a pastor who talked about a gentleman he knew fairly well, but it wasn’t until this pastor showed love by his action of setting up a charity to help the poor in that country that this gentleman was willing to really listen to the pastor’s message. The gentleman even got involved in the new charity and was instrumental in its success. It took both time and personal action on the part of the pastor to build enough credibility. The pastor’s point in this story was a good one. How can people feel Christ’s love if we aren’t there to show them with our presence and a relationship? This same principle holds true in the early Christian Church. It was the Christians’ relationships and service to others that pulled people into the truth even in those challenging times (terrible prosecution).
I was reminded of two very important principles through this process:
- People spell love – T. I. M. E.
- People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.
Neither of these two things are groundbreaking, but they are a good reminder of how we as Christians can really show Christ’s love to other people. At the end of the day, it is still relationships and unconditional love that break down the barriers for people to see Christ in each of us and open their hearts to the Truth.
Leave No Doubt – Think. Love. Share
Bonus Thought: What if we took these same principles and applied them into our current political environment as well?
