This world is full of broken things. Broken lives, broken hopes, broken dreams, marriages, childhoods, broken spirits and broken homes. Over the years I’ve had the honor and the privilege to work with some of these broken things; I’ve listened to their stories, which they somehow tell me freely and without hesitation. I’ve watched them cry at the prospects of living in a shelter, on the street, on their own, or worse: an irresponsible adult! I do my very best to, somehow, sprinkle some Jesus in there but I do it, unfortunately, from a position where I cannot reinforce it in their daily lives: I don’t go home with them; they are not my children.
Thankfully, they are Someone’s children and He loves them with an unimaginable Love! You see, so many times, these “misfit toys” believe, from very early on, that love, like respect, is earned. Dad walked out on us so if I could earn his love, he’ll come back; mom ran away and if I could only have found a way to make her love me, she would’ve stayed. This transactional love is not what our Father imagined when He placed Adam in the Garden. He envisioned an intimate, transparent, reckless love with no blemish or shadows hanging overhead: no quid pro quo’s, no tit for tat: He created us for a relationship with Him and that that relationship would serve as a model for the relationships we have with each other. The Triune God is Perfect Love because there is God the Father who is the Lover, Jesus the Son, who is the Loved and the Holy Spirit which is the how He loves. God was not lonely or bored when He created mankind; He wasn’t involved in a domestic dispute and therefore needed an out: God, in His unimaginable loving Kindness, created us in His own image so that He could, we could experience that immensely deep communion with Him as well.
Our role, as Born-Again, Spirit-filled, Bible-believing Christians is to tell the world, this broken Island of Misfit Toys, the Truth. The Truth is this: God doesn’t need them; God doesn’t need anybody! God doesn’t need them, doesn’t need me, doesn’t need Christians: God has no need for any of us! We are the ones in need! We are the ones that need to tell people the Truth and that is: God doesn’t need them, God wants them! The scandal of Grace is exactly that, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us! There’s nothing to be earned: no parent to win over, no spouse to win back, to hill to climb, to valley to walk through: God wants a relationship. He is Eternally ready, Fully willing, and Perfectly able to love them completely!
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