It's My Job to Love

It's hard to believe that it has already been almost 2.5 months since I first arrived back in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, and also that another year has passed for all of us.

Guy having fun at our Christmas Eve dinner

A year ago, I was still trying to get comfortable with a new surrounding and living in a different culture once again, but now it almost feels as if I've been here for ages.  An awful lot can occur in a year.  Relationships can be formed and broken, new family members can be born, and others have passed on, and our lives can take huge turns for better or worse that we never would have expected.


After periods of time like this, I always like to look back and see what decisions I've made, or what lessons I've learned, that will hopefully shape me into a better person in the future.  It's a process that can be difficult to be honest with yourself about, because it's always easy to be a revisionist historian about how things happened, and cast them in a better light than maybe they originally occurred, or sometimes not to give yourself or others the credit deserved for making good decisions that have made a difference in your life.

Mandarins are a Ukrainian holiday season establishment

While I think there are many things that I'd say I've learned in the past year, I think what has really stuck with me is the concept of loving your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:31, Matthew 22:39).  It is an incredibly difficult thing to do; some might say impossible.


Every day we are faced with challenges to this way of thinking and living.  When someone mistreats us, or lies to us, or steals from us, or even when we walk by a homeless person on the street, or someone who is greatly different from us, whether in lifestyle, culture, or creed.


We have decisions to make that can change this world for good or bad.  Or just simply change the life of the individual in front of you for good or bad.


Even during these two months working with orphans, I've come across moments, when I have an incredibly hard time trying to love them.  Maybe I've been told a lie, or something has been stolen, or someone is just giving me a bad attitude about something I asked of them.


The easy thing to do is just to judge them and have a poor attitude about the ways that they are acting.


Often when I am having trouble I think of something that Billy Graham, the famous evangelist, said when he publicly appeared with President Clinton not long after the President's sex scandal.


"It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge, and it’s my job to love." 


Now reread that quote again in segments, and really dwell on what it is that Rev. Graham was saying.


It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict.  It is not up to us to change their hearts.  They will be changed over time by the love of God through us.  By attempting to guilt somebody into changing their lives, you are likely pushing them further away, and not allowing for real transformation to happen.


It's God's job to judge.  We are not in charge of punishing people for their offenses.  This should not be a burden in our life.  It is very easy to get caught up in emotion, and have a feeling of righteousness come over us.  We all have things in our lives that could be judged by others, so stay humble.


It's my job to love.  This is really what it all boils down to.  It is our job to love.  Love in a self-sacrificing way, that doesn't care what the world is telling us, or even what our own heart or mind might be telling us.  Loving in a way that takes us out of the driver's seat from time to time.


Really it is often our attitude about things that keeps us from loving our neighbor as ourselves.  We just want to have so much control of the situation, and we don't trust that loving those people who have offended us will make a difference.  And many times by the measure we want to go by, a difference hasn't been made.  We want retribution or justice.  We don't take a moment to think that this attitude change is much better for us and for them, because it lifts such a huge burden away from our lives.


I hope that this New Year, that I am able to have a better attitude than the previous one.  And that I can be  more self-sacrificing, and caring than I was in the previous year, and that I am able to fulfill my role as one who loves.


The Holy Name, January 1, The Book of Common Prayer


Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy name of Jesus to be the sign of our salvation: Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of him who is the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.