What if?

I know a LOT of really cool Jesus followers. 

I know Patty Laurence, a stay at home mom, who probably hasn't stayed at home a day in the past year as she's served Louisville's homeless more than just food, but hope. She loves them with Christ's love when she sees them as victims of their circumstances. And she loves them with the same love when she learns their stories and finds they're victims of mostly just their own bad choices.

I know Lauren Blair who quit her job to run the board of a non-profit in Kenya serving children with disabilities and to write a beautiful book about the Christ followers who love these kids who are thought to be cursed. Kupenda means love in Swahili, and Kupenda teaches love to those who've written helpless little ones off as unlovable.

I know Paul and Kristin Hoffman whose hearts keep expanding as they run a baby home for sick infants in Bolivia, but can't resist adopting many of the children into their own family. Abandoned children with hearing impairment, rotten teeth, severe intestinal disease, and H.I.V. learn what unconditional love looks like, and that there is Someone who will never abandon them.

I know so many who've adopted little ones from Russia, China, Bolivia, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kenya, Uganda, Nepal, and Nicaragua, at great financial and emotional cost to themselves, not because their families were too small, but because they knew God's family is that big.

I serve with dozens of missionaries who have given up their normal, their homes, their safety to help people who have far less, because of Jesus' love.

I know people who live incarnationally. I have friends who put flesh on the words of the gospel and let the good news of God's love ooze out their pores...

What if these were the people who made the headlines? What if these humble quiet servants working behind the scenes to love in Jesus' name, were the ones who represented Jesus to those who don't know Him instead of the outspoken ones who make us known for judgement, intolerance, and hypocrisy?

Christians say we love the sinner and hate the sin. But has the publicity for how we feel about the sin been drowning out how we feel about the sinner? As a Church are we hating sin so loudly that no one can hear us loving? What if we were more like Patty who loves by housing the heroin addict, and finding a home for the ex-convict, without judging their sin.

Jesus was a friend of corrupt tax collectors, prostitutes, and all kinds of sinners. He was not known for hating much of anything except the self-righteousness of the Pharisees who looked down their noses at His friends. At the risk of people not knowing what we hate, I will choose to err on the side of letting them know who God loves.

"Love one another. In the same way I loved you, you love one another. This is how everyone will recognize that you are my disciples—when they see the love you have for each other." 
-Jesus, John 13:34-35 TM

What if instead of being known for what we hate, we were known for how we love?