Marred Faces

I sit here this evening reminiscing on the words a very dear friend once said to me. I remember it as if it happened yesterday - who could forget jury duty although we'd all love to. The walk through the metal detector, the filling out of the form announcing your attendance, and the long painstaking wait for your name to be called in uncomfortable seats, overpriced vending machines, rude courtroom staff, and a bunch of trigger happy security guards itching for some real action - ok, maybe not the last part, but you get my drift.

Anyway, I was sitting in the back next to my friend when I heard the words that have to this point remained with me like an unwanted tattoo after a night of salacious meanderings (no experience there, wink wink); she said, "You'd be satisfied with your life if you're content with mediocrity." To quote Maxwell Smart, it was an "Unexpected kick in the gonads," but in retrospect, it was needed and appreciated. I know, somebody's thinking, "I've never appreciated a kick there." On any other day, I'd agree, but on that day it was profound. You see Galatians 5:6 reads that "what is important is that faith expresses itself in love," meaning that it's those that are closest to you that can cause you the most pain, but it also those who are closest to you, who care about you enough to tell you the truth - even when it is unpleasant - it's their expression of love. My brother also told me that love requires that you open up to people and you let them in - that you trust them to love you in the same way you were built to love them. So how do both of these tie together, what is the connecting thread? I believe the thread is this, God is love. His love for us sees beyond our faults, our inadequacies, or failures and even our self absorbed triumphs. His love for us is so great that he expressed it by giving the best of what he had for those that were considered the least and those who didn't even know his life was his gift.

When we choose to believe in the promise of salvation, to live eternally beginning now, the evidence of our conviction will be in the manner in which we treat others - there is freedom in love. There is pain in love but there is a reward in love - Theodore Roosevelt said, "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotion, spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who have never tasted victory or defeat."

There have been so many times I have failed to truly demonstrate to others the same love that Christ has extended to me. There are going to be more times that I may do the same, but I take solace in knowing that my failure has become my strength and in failing, I've learned what it takes to win. That even though life, as it comes may knock me down, I trust that I will have an opportunity to express the faith I have in Christ in the way I treat others, and that my life will not be one that existed, but that it'll exist indefinitely because of the lives I pray I will be able to impact while I'm living. I told my sister that I'd never led anyone to Christ - I now realize that was not the truth - I pray that they will get to see him through me in the way I express his love to them.