love everybody?

Art by Akbari a Moria refugee

used without permision…

It was a dark night, and I was walking through a refugee camp in Greece. There were people everywhere, but I was looking for one boy. He had been to the clinic earlier that evening and had expressed some horrifying suicidal thoughts. He was alone, 15 years old, and he said that his parents had been killed by some sort of bomb. His feet still had open wounds that were not healing properly from that same bomb. He had dyed his hair blond and it hung down covering his eyes but not his mischivious smile.

I had gone to check on him before I ended my shift at midnight, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. So I walked through the sea of tarps and tents and called for him, Ali!… but he was nowhere to be found. As the burden for “my boy” weighed down on me, I realized that calling for Ali in a camp of 15,000 afghans and Arabs, is like calling for Levi in an Amish megachurch. Then I thought, ”how many people here share the same feelings of despair, how many have lost hope”. The burden I felt for Ali “my Ali” was almost more than I could bare. But My God loved each Ali in camp including “my Ali” more than I ever could. As that gnawing ache ate away at my heart, I believe that I glimpsed eternity. God my Father didn’t just love me and send his son for me while I was still a sinner, which is unfathomable by its self, but he loved each fatherless boy in that camp. He Loved each soon-to-be mother, each newborn child, and each unique person in that sea of tarps. He loves their families in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, the Congo, and beyond. For a moment I was shook with awe! Then I felt the sparks in my brain and smoke in my heart as I fell back into my limits of human comprehension.

Reality check: You and I do not have the ability to comprehend God’s love. But, having experienced it we have the responsibility to express it, to the full extent of our limited capacity. Human love that is beyond the realm of practice-ability is not love. It is an Idol served by many, it is a utopian vision just before hell, it might even be a diversion for my conscience when I fail to love the people within my reach. If you want to be a part of God’s expression of love for the world, love your neighbor. If you dare to love your enemy that is close enough to hurt you, you will probably get hurt, Jesus did. But Jesus truly loved.