"what the world needs" according to sara

I was reading People magazine on the bus, the one with Pope John Paul II on the cover. I read about his response to a failed assassination attempt during which he was shot twice and seriously injured. John Paul went to visit his attacker, Mehmet Ali Agca, in prison… and forgave him. Later, JP called it “a historic day in my life as a man, a Christian, as a bishop”. It made me want to cry. In fact, I think I got a little choked up waiting for the bus on Granville and Broadway. [But let’s never speak of that again ;).]

I haven’t really been that moved by the power of forgiveness since a Cold Case Files binge that I went on last semester. The feature was a documentary on Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, and how he ended up pleading guilty to something like 45 or 50 murders. During the victim impact statements, the father of one of the victims addressed Ridgeway and said, “I forgive you.” I can’t imagine, I really can’t. But God does amazing things. It made me go wow.

To experience a love like that, to be able to forgive someone, must be so freeing.
The thing is, I’m just not capable of that kind of love towards someone else, not without Jesus. His is a perfect love, and we need Jesus to be changing us and to be changing the world. We need Jesus to be instilling this love into our hearts. It’s easy to love someone who is nice to you and makes you feel good. But I want to love even when it’s not convenient. That, I think, is when the real transforming happens, and there are some situations where I know, “there’s no way I can be feeling this without God”. There’s no way I can be accepting this, no way I could handle a certain situation in a particular way, without Him.

The more I learn about the world, and with every new day that greets me, I am further convinced that love really is the answer. “What the world needs now is love sweet love” [oh cue the Burt Bacharach].

It sounds so sappy and naïve, but I think it’s less so than people assume. Imagine a world where people grow up KNOWING that they are loved by Jesus, and have been saved in the eyes of God by the sacrifice that Jesus made… that they can tick off “acceptance” on their list of things to achieve. Imagine what our world would look like if we met the needs of others with love. I know we don’t live in a perfect world, but a world that is wrought with evil and suffering and sadness and that doesn‘t always make sense. But I think love is what is going to change things. Loving people in community and in relationships, loving people through compassion… I feel like this is the greater commission. Through loving each other in the name of Jesus, that’s how things are gonna happen bada bing bada boom.

So I am forever relying on Jesus to authenticate the things that I do, to infuse them with love, and to slowly and continuously shape me into the person that He wants me to be.

Being intrigued by the processes of language, the syntax and the rules and the limitations, I’m always caught up in what words mean. I know that sometimes it prevents me from acting. I can sit and think for hours about what the word “love” means, and often I find myself caught up in that very question. GE Moore describes certain things as “simple concepts”. What that means is that these concepts cannot be defined, only exemplified. That seems to be true about love. But instead of sitting and thinking, I need to concentrate on the DOING, because I know from past experience that anything I am able to do or give can be transformed into something beautiful beyond my understanding. And knowing that God is love keeps me going while I freak out and try to define things and get all technical.

Meh. Often I will refrain from trying to communicate my thoughts. They’re underdeveloped and crude, and I find that language disappoints when I try to put into words what is in my heart and mind. The drawback is that they don’t get out, these thoughts, and I don’t really get anywhere. Maybe these aren’t very connected ideas yet, but it’s what’s keeping me up these days. Maybe I’ll develop them a bit more later, maybe not. But for now this is what I try to hold in my mind as I wake up and live each day, sometimes failing, sometimes not.

I just got back from the dentist and I have no cavities. Wooooooohoooo.