April 2011
In February I began fetching a little four-year-old from a school in Houghton and dropping him home.
It was simple. Fetch him. Drop him.
12pm every day. A little cash towards rent.
Sorted.
His name was Josh.
And little Josh rocked my world.
He had a tiny frame with a mop of greyish blonde hair and a constant contemplative expression on his serious face.
He would usually be sitting by himself when I fetched him and would immediately jump up and race towards me like I as a walking ice-cream machine.
He didn’t smile much and would talk with absolute intent. I began asking him simple questions that any adult would ask in an attempt to relate to a four-year-old.
I soon realized that Josh was unlike any kid I have ever met.
He would answer my simple questions in the most profound way that I would sit there in that front seat of my car in complete awe.
Before he answered any question he would stare out the window and wait a little while before answering.
It was like he saw what most people in this world could not.
The one day I asked Josh, “Do you know who Jesus is?”
He looked out the window and after about 10 seconds answered:
“Yes Faye. He’s the man who came to make it so that we don’t have to die.”
BAM. The most beautiful description from a little boy who looks at life as it should be viewed.
I drove home that day and was so challenged to STOP over-analyzing every situation and possible opportunity. I want to look at this life like Josh does. I want to get down to the niddy griddy (in the words of Nacho Libre)...
And it’s far simpler than you could dare to believe.
Hypothetically, I wish someone could take a panger and rip at the skin on my chest and take out my beating heart and hold it in their hands and feel it as it beats… and as they feel it beating they could understand what it beats for. I wish that whatever THAT is would be the very THING that people see… and not my outer layer of decaying human flesh. My soul longs for more. For more than this. I want to attempt to satisfy the deepest craving of my inner being. "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it." I wish for that to be what people see. I want to walk it out.
And yet, I feel the inclination towards passivity and self-preservation is only growing stronger.
We’ve all fallen into this spot again and again, and when sitting in that place – living for the weekend and planning the next outing, trip or getaway – it’s like our greatest pleasure begins to become the need to self-satisfy oneself with entertainment, attention or safe Christian events. The kind of soft, un-radical, norm that becomes what we live for. I hate it. Yip. Real live “hate”. We’re in something of the end of times as the birth pains emerge world-wide. It’s blatent. In our faces. Images of devastation and destruction which bring with them a whole range of emotions. The horror of human suffering. The fear of THAT happening to us. And then we roll over, turn around, look away and talk about what’s for supper, who’s dating who, where she went with him on that day, how insane the petrol price is while singing along to “I whip my hair back and forth”.
Our little worlds. Our self-protecting attitudes. Our inhibited mind-sets.
Seriously?
“We were meant to live for so much more.”
The screams of those who don’t know HIM are becoming louder. Their pitch is recognizably desperate. The opportunities are everywhere. The questioning is obvious. How can we NOT respond with a truth too extravagant to hide? How can we NOT burn with overwhelming desire to see lives being changed? How can we NOT see what the Father sees?
My greatest fear in this life is my life not counting for Christ in the way HE sees.
It’s as simple as Josh puts it. It’s making the changes that count. It’s living out the truth.
Jesus Christ died for us.
We live for him with everything that we have.
Simple. Profound. Beautiful.
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