We’ve been doing the Bob Goff study Love Does with a video component where Bob talks about his wild adventures. He challenges us to simply “do” love. Bob came out with this book in 2012 and he’s been loving A LOT in big, mighty ways. I first heard about Bob from one of Donald Miller’s books. I thought it was Blue Like Jazz, but realized it was A Million Miles In A Thousand Years. Miller came out with Blue Like Jazz in 2003 and I got it at my first campus ministry conference. I’ve given books away for years and some make it back to me. When I left the University of Florida in 2016, a student returned this book to my office with a heartfelt letter that I still have today.
It’s beat up and faded. But don’t you feel like old books are like friends. Flipping through reading my notes, smiley faces, and exclamation marks felt familiar and I realized this book has shaped me and how I do ministry – incarnational, relational, authentic, real. “Love your people, love your people, love your people,” as Bishop Bevel Jones told us every class period when he was teaching about the United Methodist Book of Discipline.
I was struck by Laura’s story today and I had to share it because of it’s honesty, poignancy, and it made me smile.
God built is to be in relationship with each other. God wants us to be connected to God and people. I say this almost every week in some form or another, we may be the only Gospel some people ever see. You don’t have to be a perfect, Susie Sunshine Christian with all pep and no depth, you just have to be real.
That reminds me of a story from The Velveteen Rabbit:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
“I suppose you are real?” said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.
“The Boy’s Uncle made me Real,” he said. “That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can’t become unreal again. It lasts for always.”
Keep on being real with all that the world throws at us each day. Let the world see your anger, your tears, your joy, your peace, your exhaustion, your hope ever in the midst. Remember the words of Jesus in John 16:33, “I have said this to you so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution, but take courage: I have conquered the world!”
Love God. Love People. Repeat.
Blessings on the Journey 