There’s an orphan who lives at the shelter that we’re working with named Michelle.
My relationship with Michelle began when we went to a city about an hour away for a “crusade” one night…
There I am sitting in a pew with 6 Moldovan girls who speak Romanian and Russian, but not English.
Naturally, I do what I know how to do: I playfully elbow Michelle in the arm, she elbows me back, starts tickling me, and I cuddle her. We stayed cuddled next to each other in that pew for the remaining 90 minutes of the service; and that was that, Michelle had my heart right there.
Michelle’s been at the shelter for about a month, and she’s precious. She’s so playful, constantly running into us with a forceful hug or begging to play just one more game of ninja (lots and lots of ninja gets played with Michelle). She’s perfect, I want to adopt her and bring her back with me. Unfortunately, I still have 9 countries left before I’m heading back to the states, so I don’t think I can take her with me…but I adore her.
I’ve known that Michelle’s only been here about a month since we got here, but I didn’t know why.
I found out this morning that she’d been at another orphanage before this one, and that she’d had a lot of behavioral problems (stealing, etc.), so she was sent here.
She doesn’t speak any English, so I’ve only been able to see her childlike playful tendencies, her obvious need for affection and validation, and her endless ability to give love and to laugh through infinite games of ninja and tickle wars.
The language barrier offered me the perspective I needed to be able to see Michelle the way God sees her. I’m not proud of it, but if I’d known she was a “problem child” and a “thief” before I fell absolutely in love with her, it’s likely that I’d just see her as a problem child and a thief.
The reality is that she’s God’s daughter, that she’s precious, that she’s adored, that she’s fearfully and wonderfully made, that God knew her before she was born; and that she’s set apart for good works, which were planned before she was conceived.
God’s been teaching me about His love this week, about loving people regardless of the sin and evil they’re carrying and operating in. The evils that people operate in are just as uncomfortable to God as they are to us, and so He loves them out of those behaviors by loving the hell out of them…
but when I see people who stand directly in opposition to the Kingdom of God, my first reaction isn’t to love the hell out of them, my first reaction is to write them off and move on to someone who makes me less uncomfortable.
God loves them, though.
He doesn’t see a liar, He doesn’t see a thief, He doesn’t see a prostitute, He doesn’t see an adulterer, He doesn’t see an addict.
He just sees His children, and He sees them enslaved by lies about who they are and what they’re capable of and what they’re worthy of.
I wonder what would happen if we stopped labeling people by their habits,
if we walked across campus and saw sons and daughters of God instead of the “partiers,”
if, on our way to work, we saw sons and daughters of God instead of impatient jerks cutting us off.
What if we could see the anxiety that had them encaged?
What if we could speak against the lies that tell people that their only hope for affection or success or validation is drinking, or relationships, or climbing the corporate ladder?
What if we could see and love the potential of who a person is at their core, and use that perspective to help them see themselves for how much they’re worth?
What if we identified the people around us by the way God sees them, instead of identifying them by their behaviors?
What if we highlighted their victories instead of their shortcomings?
And what if, when we saw no change in their behavior after we tried to communicate their true worth to them, we continued to love them?
Because God continues to love us.
