I apologized to my team a couple weeks ago. I told them I felt that the lesson I was learning from them was that if I loved them, I wouldn’t be taken care of in return. The reality of it is that God was using them to teach me.
As the team treasurer, I spent grocery shopping time making sure the team stayed within budget for the week, while the rest of the team took care of buying their own breakfasts and lunches. When checkout time came, I was the only one without personal items.
That night when I realized I would have no food until dinner the next day, I asked the team if someone would go to the store with me, even if it was a quick stop for just yogurt for breakfast to hold me over. No one would go, which meant I couldn’t go. Then a few hours later, a couple teammates came back with my yogurt.
The next day I was left with the same dilemma: As the day was nearing an end and I still had no food, I asked the team again to help …at least an apple or something for breakfast…and still, no one would go to the store with me. But as we were walking back to the apartment, a fruit stand!
I was still upset though because no one was going to the store, and all I could think about was how I gave my time, I loved them, and now no one would give their time or a little love. Then at the very last minute, a teammate decided he needed to go to the grocery store, which meant I got to go! Instead of excitement and gratitude though, my immediate thoughts were, “oh look, he gets what he wants, but if it’s what I want no one will help.”
It wasn’t until worship that night when we started talking about loving others that I realized what God had been doing.
God provided multiple times, and I was too ignorant to see it…because it wasn’t in the way I was looking for it.
I expected my team to love me back, instead of trusting God to provide.
As established in my prior blog, we shouldn’t love others to receive love back, but we also shouldn’t love others EXPECTING to be loved back.
When giving love, we should turn to God to claim our reward. Remember who it is your serving: “I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.” (Matt 25:40). In serving my team, I was serving Him, and does a servant not go to his Master for his reward?
The Author of Love has gifts to give! Gifts far better than any man could give.
God promises in Proverbs 11:24 that we will get more if we give more.
Living in true community is not the easiest thing. We are broken people, who, despite our best attempts, fail to love exactly as Christ would have loved. What I am learning the most on the Race is that we are simply called to love. Not to be loved (because remember, we already are). I am learning to love without concern for receiving it back from someone else, after all isn’t that what Christ did? He loved first, without expectation of being loved back. What I do know is that I have a Father in heaven, who loves you and me better than any human ever could, and He will give you the love you need…maybe even through others.
This realization has brought peace to me that I have never known amongst my teammates. To future World Racers, and all those living in the real world, I would encourage you to release your loved ones from expectation, love as best as you know how, and count on God to give you the rest.
“If you’ll have a funeral for the expectations that others can never meet, God will give you a resurrection that will exceed every expectation you ever had” –Steven Furtick
