We’ll Just Love Them

In this day and age, we sometimes find ourselves believing the worst in others. I’ve served on committees where instead of helping people, as we were designed to do, we’ve spent hours trying to prevent people from receiving unneccesary gain. “We want to serve the people who REALLY need the benefit,” people would say. It hit my heart yesterday as I was walking through our church when I saw the sign about our food bank which said: “You MUST have a DFCS referral to receive ANYTHING. NO EXCEPTIONS.” I stood and pondered it for a minute as my mind wandered back to a time when I helped raise food for the hungry. These hungry people were my fellow coworkers, too ashamed to go to DFCS or who made “too much money” to receive any benefits. I remember a friend who was feeding her daughters out of the hospital gift shop via potato chips and crackers. She worked day in, day out and would come in extra hours whenever we needed her but yet she made “too much money” to receive any assistance. Too much money, huh?

 

It was amazing and heartbreaking all at once to see so many of the people that I passed on a daily basis coming to ask for help with such a basic necessity. They weren’t bad people, they didn’t mismanage their money, it was just that there wasn’t enough money to go around or that life circumstances had been stacked against them. Insurmountable odds…isn’t that what we’ve all faced at one time or another whether it was of a financial nature or something else. We’ve all been at a low point in life when all we desperately needed was a break, a second chance. Thankfully, God is there to lend that second chance and to bridge the gap between what we have and what we need.

 

On the way to work this morning I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing a pastor from a local church with a food bank. He said, “They don’t need to bring anything or any referral…we’ll just love them as they are.” Friends, isn’t that what Jesus did for us? Isn’t that what he COMMANDED of us? This world is not perfect and we aren’t the ones who can make it that way. It is only through the precious love of God that our shortcomings and failures have been forgiven. Through Jesus, the gap is bridged. We don’t have to bring a referral. Jesus is there for us no matter if we’ve led perfect Christian lives or if we’ve been hell raisers.

 

Times are hard and in times like these, there are people who deceive, people who lie, and people who steal. But, as Christians, is it really our place to judge and draw lines in the sand between who should eat and who should not? So what if they are lying? Yes, it’s wrong and deceitful but God is the judge here. He has the judgement day for those people. But for now, while on this earth and in our presence, we must choose to do the thing He commanded…we should just love them.