I mentioned in one of my earlier blogs that God has literally dropped us into a mission field here in Uganda. We are staying at a guest house that overlooks a slum community. Literally right next to our house-on the other side of our iron clad gate stands a place called “The Gentle Man’s Club”…you can probably figure out for yourself what goes on there.
As a woman, my flesh wants to LOATHE the men that frequent places like this. Men that have lost what it means to respect a woman. Men that take advantage of women and children to fulfill their own, selfish desires for sex. Men that have traded what is good and right in the sight of God for something embarassing and degrading. Men that try to fulfill the void in their hearts meant to be filled by Jesus and only HIM with sex, drugs, and alcohol. My flesh wants to hate him. In my flesh I get angry when I see the women, the GIRLS that look at me with sad, empty faces, silently crying out for help….for someone to come to their rescue. When I look at them, I think about how I long for my “prince to come”, the man God has saved for ME, and I remember that they too wait for that day, except their view of men is much different than mine. To them, men are a source of pain, “work”, the thing that keeps food on the table, and my heart breaks. My flesh wants to hate him.
My flesh wants to hate him. But I can’t.
As I think about hating him, I hear that still small voice say, “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” Again, my flesh wants to hate him, but the righteous woman in me won’t allow such a thing. As I fight for my right to hate him and those like him, again I hear, “Bev, it is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick…for I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Really God?! You want me to love THEM?! You want me to love the men that are causing so many women and children around the world SO much pain and strife? God, that is asking a lot! I’m not sure I can do it. “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God.” “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”
God is calling each and everyone of us to a radical life of love. He is calling you, and me to love the unlovable. He is calling us to love the men that torment women. The beggar. The sick. The person at work that annoys the crap out of you. Your siblings. Your Ex. The best friend that stabbed you in the back. In our flesh we find that we want to hate these people. But we lay down our rights. “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on EARTH as it is in heaven.” We are the hands and feet of Christ. We are “Jesus with skin”. And we are called to love.
