Why do we love? Do we love in order to get something out of a deal? Do we love in order to feel a certain way or do we love because He first loved us?
Do we love the people that are easy to love? The ones that are kind and nice. The ones who you have a pleasant interaction with, what about the ones who are having a rough day and might snap at you? What about the people who talk about you behind your back, the ones who do evil things? Do we love them, do we show them love? Do we love the men that buy and sell women and children as if they were objects? Do we love the traffickers who steal women and smuggle them into another country? How can you love someone who does something so evil? What about the men and women who travel thousands of miles to take advantage of these people? That go into the bars of Thailand for one reason? What about the people you share a room with for 3 months? The people you see every single day, day after day, when they annoy you and you just can't stand it anymore? How do you love those people?
God has so been challenging me in how I love people, how I can show his love to people that I just meet, on the street, in an airport or the barista making my coffee. When I was going through the red light district of Chiang Mai and seeing the women and men that work in these places my heart just broke. To love these men and women weren't hard, you see their brokenness and you just know that God loves them, what was harder was to love the men in these bars...when you see the wedding rings, and the flirting and you know what they are there for. How do you love these men when you think of the evil that they do...and then God gives me a glimpse of how He see them. They are just as lost and broken as the men and women who work in the bars. They are His sons and Jesus died for them just as much as he died for me.
In the movie Nefarious, a former trafficker says these words that made me change the way I thought. He said, "I was a captive of one thing, she was a captive of another thing, but God WANTS to set the captives FREE!" God can redeem the darkest parts of our lives. This man who was formerly a trafficker now works with at risk youth. Instead of trafficking the youth, he helps protect them and make them more aware of their surroundings and how traffickers think and work.
Sometimes I think as Christians we put labels on sin and say that we aren't as bad as those people but in Gods eyes we have failed, we are all the same and that is a sobering thought. but the good thing is that while we were still in our sin, God reached out, He loves us so much. He just wants his kids back, he just wants a relationship with us. Nothing we have done will make him love us any less or any more. He desires a relationship with us where we are at, we don't have to meet this standard or anything in order to get His love. He just loves us and He fights for us and He defends us. He just wants us.
To love can look like just listening to someone's story. To sit and listen and be with a friend who is grieving or going through a tough time. To love means to die to our selfish desires and put others needs before our own. To love can simply be using your server, barista, person checking you out at a grocery store's name when you talk to them. The world will change not by any big movement but by small acts of love and kindness.
