Recently, a video popped up on my YouTube thread.  It was one of those Hollywood award shows, the Golden Globes.  One of the actresses who won for best actress in a motion picture walked up to the podium and began to give her acceptance speech.  Her voice wasn’t the same for she was battling a cold but she began her speech anyway.  The speech was more of a political tirade from a leftist point of view and of course they panned to the admiring audience clapping and hanging on every word with agreement to every point she made.  I started to roll my eyes, and felt complete disdain for these rich elitists who I thought were so out of touch with the real world, completely bonkers in la la land. In my mind I started building walls to protect myself from her words penetrating the borders into my heart.  I was just about ready to scroll down and look at another video on my thread but it was then I heard the Spirit’s quiet voice whisper to me.  It was just a random thought that came into my head.  The words were those of compassion, like a mother who feels for her sick child, “Ah, she has a cold, Tom.  Pray for her healing.”  Then something clicked within me and I began to look beyond all the words of her speech, the political mumbo jumbo that I disagreed with and I saw her through a different lens.  I began to see her in the light of the cross. I saw something we both had in common.  We both are deeply loved by a merciful God who chose to die for us, to rescue us from sin and death and forgive us!  Now of course she has to one day receive that forgiveness by faith but that doesn’t change the fact that when He sees her, He looks upon her with deep fondness and out of this world love.  I know that sounds crazy, to pray for her cold but that is our God! He just saw that she had a cold and no matter what she was saying, all He thought about was wanting her to feel better.  I started feeling for her too and all I wanted in that moment was to make her a chicken noodle soup and give it to her.  God is love.  He is not some cranky old white guy wearing his red MAGA (Make America Great Again) cap just looking forward to when we mess up so he could say to us, “You’re fired!”.  He’s the merchant who sells everything He has to enter into the darkness of our ocean just to seek us, the pearl of great price! Matthew 13:45-46. He’s the woman who loses a coin, but lights a lamp, searches and sweeps carefully till she finds it.  Luke 15:8-10.  We are that coin of great worth and value! God is love, AGAPE!  Unconditional love, that’s who He is and always has been and will be and that’s how God sees us.  He doesn’t get hung up so easily like we do on behaviors and political agendas, He doesn’t side with evil but He paid the price on the cross to deal with evil and provides you and me and all of humanity, even the worst of it, the opportunity to encounter this gift of grace.  He wants to dwell with us and He doesn’t care what lengths He has to go to get to us.

In John 4:29, we read about the woman at the well, “Come see a man who told me all that I ever did.  Can this be the Christ?”  Here a Samaritan woman is telling her family and friends to come meet Jesus.  Why was she so excited about the fact that He told her everything she ever did?  After all it wasn’t real flattering, what Jesus said of her.  He pointed out that she had five husbands and the one she was with was not her husband.  Some like to point out that Jesus was condemning and pointing out her flaws, “Repent or else”.  I don’t think so, she wouldn’t of been so thrilled to bring everyone to meet him.  No, she knew her status, she was a woman, she was looked down upon, on the bottom of the totem pole of society.  She also was a Samaritan and was hated by the Jews, was labeled a half breed, pagan and unclean.  Last of all she was a lawbreaker, an adulteress, sexually promiscuous.  The disciples when they saw Jesus with her, couldn’t believe it.  I could hear the disdain in their voices, “Why are you talking to HER?”, verse 27.  But with Jesus all of that didn’t matter.  Instead of avoiding Samaria, like most self righteous Jews did in those days, He chose to pass through her town and came to where she was at.  He told her all that she had done, not to judge her or make her feel bad, but because He wanted her to know that even her sinful lifestyle wasn’t going to stop Him from loving her.  He sat down with her and looked beyond the cultural stigma, didn’t get hung up on her sin, and He engaged with Her, He looked past the flesh and saw her value through the eyes of the Spirit, John 4:23-24.  This is why she was so overjoyed.  She could not believe that a Jewish man claiming to be the Messiah would actually sit down and serve her a drink, not the other way around. How could this be? 

I am convinced that the more I see myself wrapped up in His unconditional love for me and the more I marvel at the wonders of the cross, the more it changes not only how I see myself but how I see others.  I no longer see them in the flesh but in the spirit.  My prayer is that we the Church would be a people who know we are fully loved by God, our Papa, and that we would be willing to sit with the sinner, not quick to scold them.  They don’t need to be told what we are against, just how much Christ is for them.  But we won’t do this unless we know like the Samaritan Woman figured out that we are fully accepted! This is not by our performance or service but simply by His grace. Ephesians 1:6 (NKJ) tells us “To the praise of His glorious grace, by which he has made us accepted in the Beloved.”  Yes, the gospel is an invitation to accept Jesus but it’s more than that, it’s the stunning announcement that He accepts you first! And just like the Samaritan woman, may we rest in the fullness of this truth that we just want to tell everyone else to come and meet this Jesus that knows everything about me, my hiccups, my messes, my dark skeletons and yet sits with me and offers me living water!  Let’s venture out with Jesus, putting on Christ, our scuba gear of love, and dive deep into the darkness of the ocean floor, seeking clams to draw out pearls of great price, all for the simple delight of Papa!

1 Corinthians 5:16 (The Message)