A few weeks ago, I was talking with a young guy who occasionally attends our Friday night prayer meeting. There’s something about the kid that’s a mystery to me. I don’t know where his church home is, he walks to prayer even in bad weather, and he always has plenty to philosophize about. I’ve never seen him with any friends, he’s a bit socially awkward, and I gathered from talking to him that his parents are no longer together. It’s not unusual for him to look like he just rolled out of bed and came in the clothes he wore the day before. Brennan Manning would describe him as a genuine ragamuffin.
When I asked this young man how he was doing, his answer really penetrated me, “Jesus has been especially loving to me.” Pause. Jesus has been especially loving to me? Without a car, money, or friends and Jesus has been especially loving? Shame on me. How many times have I questioned His love while enjoying so much more? How many times have I felt distant from the savior because of self-pity and ingratitude?
The last time I saw this guy, he was worshiping his heart out. It put a huge smile on my face to watch him dance, shout, clap, and run around the room in celebration of his especially loving savior. Some might say he’s in his own little world, but it’s a world I wouldn’t mind living in to experience an especially loving Jesus.
Especially loving Savior… it sounds like a cool song, or a poem of one who has been with him in a way that changed them, forever. I have had priviage of times, of this lavish kind of love, from my Savior…
3/20/09 “Especially Loving Savior”
:by Karen Valdez Billman
On those occasions, of high and wide searching, for a
soaking, of that we can not even see with naked eye’s,
we find The Heart. While we are intent on grasping the
unseen, with our connected soul of matter,we can not even
measure; Is where we sip of the Wine. To fully contain
nothing… not our need, not our wound, not our failure,
…nothing. And in that, quiet surrender, is when we then
enter. What is awaiting? Who is,He.. really? That One,of
whom we would take on the ache of transforming, for. To
realize that it is not in the understanding of our why’s,
that understanding comes. Nor,is it in the being under-
stood, that we find our meaning as one. But, within our
search, our discovery, and the seeing our emptiness…
His Kingdom then appears, as the thoghtless breath.
Breath comes with no thought to us. By design, it just
simply… is. Many a god will stand, and will fall. Will
live in the mind of one. And will die with him, as well.
But One, of another kind, all together has come… with
hunger; and soul that could not be arrested by any man’s
foolish faith; faith in all that had come before Him,but
not in He himself. One of a love so deep, so established,
so..
… especially loving,
that He could only ba a “Savior”!