Practicing Unconditional Love

You must love in order to be loved. You must be inclusive in order to feel yourself among the include. You must give in order to receive.

Cheryl Strayed

I am so surprised by the universal feeling of being odd, uncool, set apart. I scroll through Facebook and see all these perfect families having their amazing adventures and I think - “Wow, they must be a really put together family.” Maybe there are some of those out there.

When I get to know families, even the ones with the perfect family photos and the amazing destination adventures, I have not yet met a perfectly put together family. Hope springs eternal I guess, but I wonder, especially during this time of chaos and upheaval and crisis, if there might be another perspective to consider.

If Jesus and his community had the internet, there was a young man who surely would have been an instagram influencer. In Mark 10, this influencer shows up and asks Jesus, quite dramatically on fallen knee, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus takes some offense to being called “good” by this young man and reminds him of the ten commandments. Which, according to this young ruler, he has kept since he was a boy. Maybe I’m reading something into the text that isn’t here but I hesitantly observe that Jesus has easily welcomed women and children, the demon possessed, and a woman my mother would refer to as a hussy. But this young man? What happens to him? This guy with his sense of righteousness and wealth? What does Jesus do with him.

He loves him. Jesus also suggests he sell all his possessions and give them to the poor! Head bent in sadness, the young man walks away. In fairness, we do not know what the young ruler chose to do. Maybe he eventually did just as Jesus asked. We do not know.

But what we do know is that Jesus was an inclusive kind of guy. He loved the rich and poor, the slaves and free, the Greeks and Jews, the naughty and the nice.

What if we decided to follow that example and love one another all willy nilly? We could stop fretting over who agreed with us or who loved us back and we could just love people. We could love them whether or not they pose on Facebook or shun Facebook. We could love our friends and our enemies. There might need to be some follow up conversations as to how that will look, but wow - I imagine they would be far more interesting then some of the conversations we are engaging in as of late!

Don’t Forget What it Feels Like to Be a Stranger

“Small shifts in how you think make a tremendous difference in how you feel.”

Erica Layne

In my journal of what NOT to do when I got old, I had this little gem in there: Do NOT forget what it is like to not be the cool kid. We moved a lot when I was growing up. Sometimes I’d just be getting my sea legs in one town and we’d be off to the next. I know what it feels like to not be the cool kid. I understand what it feels like to be invisible.

This “knowing” is one of the reasons Pete and I chose to stay in Richmond and raise our kids in the same house. There were options over the years to move but we found a way to maintain this home base. Consequently, I did not get any cooler, but I was able to find my way to the grocery store. I learned to have preferences for which checkout line to slide into. When I walk in my neighborhood I may not know all the names of the people but I recognize most of the faces. It would be easy for me to forget what it feels like to be a stranger, even if I never will know what it means to be cool.

In Mark 10, people were bringing their kids to Jesus for his blessing and the disciples did not like it. They shushed and prodded the parents to take those kids away. Jesus rebuked them. He told them that no one was getting into the kingdom of God UNLESS they were willing to receive the kingdom of God like a little child. And then because he was not the kind of son of God who talked a big game without actually entering into the contest, he blessed those kids.

Kids were not cool in Jesus’ time; they were invisible. Jesus valued them anyway.

So take heart! If you have ever felt like a stranger, uncool kid, or beggar asking for Jesus to bless you - it is clear that Jesus hears you, sees you, reaches out and grabs you in for a big old pre-covid hug.

But also - beware! Beware that in our shift from an invisible person to a loved-by-God human we do not forget what it was like to be on the other side of that invisible barrier.

And he took the children in his arms, placed his hands on them and blessed them.

Mark 10:16 NIV