love & obedience

We are doing something crazy:

There is this child.

We are strangers to them. 

This child has no family.

This child has issues - some of them you can see, some of them you can't.  Some of them don't even exist yet.

And we are going to say to this stranger-child, "Hey!  There is a lot - an awful lot - that stands between us and you, but we are willing to cross all those bridges.  We'll span the oceans.  We are willing to let your issues be our issues.  Your mess, our mess.  Your story, our story.  We are willing to be your family and love you always."

Wait, you say.  That's not crazy.  That is exciting, noble, wonderful!

Perhaps.

There is a cost you see... the hidden, secret cost. 

Because to take a complete stranger with all their mysterious messiness, and call them family... to open your arms to a child whose unknowns will shake you to your core, whose potential for disaster may outweigh your potential to love, and be willing to chose to love even still...

That means you have to stop looking at what you want.

Stop looking at what you need.

Take all those things that you are so desperate to call you own - your dreams, your fears, your hopes, every deceitful, pacifying half truth you tell yourself, your reputation and your friendships - every good and bad that defines you...

...and give them up.

Then you must choose to be obedient to a vision of love that is outlandish.

wild

misunderstood

presumptive

bold

undeserved

stubborn

hopeful

And you must choose it in your darkest hours, in the blindness of your selfishness, in the midnight of your despair.  Again and again, over and over and with every breath...

You must choose love, and obedience.