“Our homes have become a shrine to the worship of self because we see them as our refuge instead of Jesus.”

I got this off of Twitter last week.  I thought it was a powerful message in itself.  Then I spent the weekend with some kids from Abilene who have made the decision to live and work in the worst neighborhood in the city.  They open their doors to their neighbors.  They provide meals twice a week that everyone is invited to.  They eat rice and beans for most of their meals because they want to live more like the world lives than in the excess of what most Americans think is normal.  Their home is a not a refuge but a mission field.  They eat with drug abusers.  They eat with convicts.  They eat with people who know how to resolve things with their fists…and knives…and guns.  They eat with the very people who break into their house and steal from them and when they find out who the thief was, they let him/her know that they love them.

John was an ex-con who started coming around.  He is a gang member, a school drop-out and an all-around rough character.  He came and ate with them a few times.  He talked to them a few times.  Eventually, John spent the night at their house a few times when he had nowhere else to sleep.  John’s cousin stole a bike from their house and when the guy that owned the bike saw the cousin riding it, he pulled up next to the cousin and talked to him as a friend, not an accuser.  The bike owner put the word out that he had given the cousin the bike because he needed it.  John couldn’t quite figure that out.  John went back to jail for a former crime and while he was incarcerated, decided that people did love him.  It was something he hadn’t experienced for most of his short life.  John got out of prison, got his GED, still hangs out with these guys some and is trying to turn his life around.  A few weeks ago, John called one of the guys and asked for the phone number of one of their former roommates, Ben, who had a very expensive camera stolen from the house.  A little while later, John called back and said he had called Ben to tell him he has stolen the camera (before his recent jail time), that he was going to sell the $1,000+ camera for $20, that the guy he was selling it to started looking through the pictures and it was the guys in the house playing with the neighborhood kids, pictures of love and community.  John tried to take the camera back but the buyer was bigger and maybe had more weapons.  John ran and didn’t get any money.

John’s punishment wasn’t more jail time.  It was a guilty conscience that grew out of being surrounded by love instead of hatred, by people who wanted to be his friend, not prison guards.  Love is changing John in ways jail never could.  Who knows where this story may go?

I did this exercise with our youth group last week because it’s one I need to do myself over and over.  Ready 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 and insert “God” in place of “love” (or where the words refer to love).  God is love.  Now read it again and put your name in place of “love” and see if the scripture still fits.

I will keep doing it until “Jeff is patient, Jeff is kind..” and “Jeff never fails” is more reality than a good idea.

Love can change the world.

Grace and peace to you.