~ Love and Acceptance

I was listening to the radio tonight on the way home from a meeting.  The program was an interview with two people who built a ministry to destroyed young people from a broken down farm and a couple of broken down and abused horses.

It wasn’t so much about what this couple did as what Father did through the horses and them.  I thinks God knows that people are pretty smart, even the broken ones.  He allowed the horses to get through to the young people who arrived at the farm doorstop when the couple themselves could not. In fact they simply love these kids with the love of God and waited for the young people to come ready for healing. 

I know without a doubt that this is an absolute simplification of the story but my drive was not long enough to hear either the start or the finish of the interview.  But it served as an inspiration for this blog. 

Unfortunately we as the Community of Faith do not demonstrate these attitudes.  The broken hearted people of our societies would find their own way to Father if we could learn to be more open and accepting of them.  Instead we often portray an attitude of “other”, we define the normal by what we find as comfortable.  In the process we exile the “other” groups as unacceptable and far out of the reach of the love of the All Loving Father.

The sad truth is that so often we do not realize the roadblocks that we setup to alienate the people we alienate.  The Church of Jesus Christ in so many countries is a repudiation of the Love of Christ.  So many “non-Christian” groups have been hurt by the Church’s stance on their lifestyle or the decision/ actions that have resulted in their being where they are today.  It is too easy to make a list of these groups but that would be lead up with homosexual couples, single mothers, prostitutes, the drunk and drug addicted.

From the interview that I was listening to in the car the couple had a very simple strategy for the young kids who arrived at their door.  Love them and let God do the rest.  There were no pre conditions for acceptance, no letter of reference was required, and the kids did not even have to pay room and board – that was left up to Father.  Our couple did not even have a code of behaviour as if they were doing the kids a favour by letting them stay there.

Another story I recall is about a young university hippy who found Jesus but not in a Church.  Anyhow this young hippy thought the Sunday after meeting the Master that perhaps he should be in a church.  So I thongs, jeans and a T-shirt he saunters into a ‘60s conservative church and finds a piece of carpet in the front of the pews.  The congregation drew its collective breath until an elderly elder of about 80 went down and, dropping his walking stick, sat down with the hippy. The story is apparently true and the legend is that no-one there remembered the sermon that day but everyone remembered the hippy and the elder sitting on the carpet.

Friends this is not meant to guilt anyone.  That would be contrary to the spirit of the blog.  It is meant to ask questions, to inspire innovation about the way we deal with those outside the Community of Faith because there are too many people for whom “Jesus” is a swear word and the Church is a Curse of Oppression.  Only we can change that one person at a time and each day by day.