The other day an old habit was pointed out to me, one of the ones you forget you have. I live in Michigan and by default it was cold, rainy, and windy. I run distance so (by default) I was outside running with my team doing 600 meter repeats on a flooded track. All of us were soaked to the bone and shivering but after a few intervals I was warm under my sweatshirt so at the line I peeled it off and gave it to my teammate who was wearing just shorts and a t-shirt (again, Michigan).
She put it on the whole time telling me that I didn’t have to and I shrugged it off and told her “Hey, it’s my job,” then we kept running. Later one of the girls asked me why I always say that, and I honestly didn’t even remember why myself.
Then I did.
Six years ago everything I knew about my faith changed. I was walking downstairs for church and my mom was in the kitchen crying- I froze. I knew that one of family members had been struggling with cancer the past year, I knew it had spread, and then I knew what happened that morning. Lynne’s passing shook my family to the core, she was such a beautiful person inside and out.
I didn’t bring a book to read during the service that morning, I just sat there next to my grandma and my mom; three generations with tears silently rolling down their faces. For the first time, in a long time, I listened to the sermon.
It was about Jesus and the adulterous woman who was thrown at his feet by the Pharisees, testing him on the laws of Moses that stated that the woman deserved to be stoned to death. Jesus said to the crowd “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” (John 8:7)Eventually one by one the crowd walks away, realizing their own imperfections, and the woman is left alone in the court with Jesus “Where are they? Did no one condemn you?” 11 She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “I do not condemn you, either. Go. From now on sin no more.” (John 8:10-11)
Our Pastor looked at us, simply, straightforward, and said “It is not your job on this earth to judge people, it is your job to love them.”
And everything I was as a Christian changed. I don’t have to fix people. I don’t have to condemn them. I certainly don’t have any right to hate. I don’t have to shove a religion down someone elses throat. It’s not my job.
It is my job to love like Jesus did; with grace, selflessness, and wholeheartedly. It is my job to take people as they are. It’s not my job to change people. And it’s not my job to be perfect.
I don’t always do my job so well, I can be selfish and short-tempered and a gossip. But because of how I’m loved I can be redeemed.
So I am the team captain who gives up sweatshirts, braids hair, wraps ankles, and loses her voice cheering. I will be the 3 am friend who you need when it feels like the world is breaking down. I will be the person who brings you boxes of fruit snacks when you’re sick because its the only thing you can keep down.
I don’t do any of these small things because I am a perfect person, but because I am perfectly loved. Loved with a love that can move mountains, the sea, and the stars, and still knows my heart.
If I can emulate even a fraction of that in my life, then I have done my job well.
“Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?” -Francis Chan
