Where You're Going

I've been volunteering recently with a place called The Urban Ministry. It's a colorful little place that practically fully serves the homeless community of Charlotte. They have doctors, nurses, counseling, food, job training, art classes, etc. In my opinion, it embodies Christ's view of helping the homeless. The ministry works hard to not enable people to remain homeless but instead, with great effort, strives to free them from their current trials and help them toward a better life. I was sitting at the desk just a few days ago, listening to all the stories people came up and told me. It's interesting how uninhibited most of these people are, so willing to tell you a story, even if it may not be the complete truth, still a heart-breaker nonetheless. They make me realize that we're not so different and the chasm between us is often not as wide as some of us like to believe. I tell tales to mask my real life as I know almost everyone does.

I met a particular man, nice looking guy probably once was middle class. He didn't seem like the homeless type (and we all know we unfortunately have a stereotype in our heads). He came up to my desk and began to tell me his story. The sincere remorse and hurt he felt telling the story made it much more plausible for me. He stood in front of me, practically shaking with insecurity, telling how he had just left rehab and now had no place to go. He'd been sober 12 months and needed a bus pass to get to a job agency that he knew of to help him get work. He wasn't asking for handouts or anything of that nature. He was asking how to get to the agency.

Thoughts rolled through my head as I listened to this man. What happened to him before? Where did he come from? Where was he planning on going? Does he believe he can truly recover? Does he have family or friends to help him? Does he know a great God that can take his past and use it for great good in his future? But above all, I sat and wondered why he felt so ashamed of where he had been.

I feel that way sometimes- ashamed of my past or thinking my present as a failure. We mask our lives to represent ourselves as better than we actually think we are. We dance around the truth or put it into eloquent words to either obtain pity or a positive impression from people, whatever we're looking for. I saw this man and wondered why he felt so ashamed of a life God knew about, a life that, if he's meant to follow God, can be used to reach all those in his same position and outside of it to glorify, truly magnify this great God that can do all things. I wondered why we're all so ashamed of where we've been and where we are. When I think about it, those things really don't matter. What matters is where we're going.

I'm going a long, long way. I'm going toward and am currently in eternity with God. My past blemishes have either been erased or have been forgiven such that they can be used to carry with me to relate to and love others. I look back on a few of my past "mistakes" and realize God knew all along and has since used every one of those moments to bring me back to him and to help some other person feel God's warmth and grace.

I wanted so deeply to transfer that saving knowledge to this poor man standing in front of me at the desk. But as I tried, I too realized it's a concept that's impossible to grasp without knowing our value in the eyes of a God that made us perfect. I pray that man too will go a long, long way in life. I pray we will all realize that what really matters is where we're going. The impression that I leave with people and the accomplishments that I've had are really insignificant if you think about it. All that matters is where I'm headed.

To be ashamed of where we've been is really to tell God He hasn't been the God of our lives and hasn't been with us all along. Sure we sin but grace abounds all the more when we do. He's promised to never leave us or forsake us. So really, if you think about it, we should never be ashamed of where we've been and the only adjustments to be made are if we're not proud of where we're going.

Pumpkins

My sister-in-law just sent me an email that rang rather true. It compared Christians to pumpkins. As cheesy as it may sound, the comparison is right on. If you think about it, when we becomes believers, I mean true believers, God picks us up out of the patch where we've been growing since our birth. We've been fertilized there and sown in all kinds of weeds that have previously been used to harm us. Now, God picks us up, just as we pick pumpkins out of the patch.

When you pick a pumpkin you take it home and wash it off, just like God washes all our sin and yuckiness off. It sound incredibly cheesy, but it's so accurate. Think about the rest of the process. You cut off the top so you can get all the junk out and carve a face. A person's top is his or her brain. I think where many Christians go wrong is that when we believe and put our faith in Christ He has to chop off our human thinking. We still try to function and do things on our own and we can do nothing apart from Christ. So when we do, we exist in our humanness. Our human mind is filled with our old ways of thinking and our old plans that don't include God. We have to let God chop that off and stop thinking apart from Him. We have to stop the life and the thinking we used to have and learn a whole new way of living.

After the top comes off all the goop and seeds come out. As the email went, the seeds of guilt, doubt and I can't remember what else, but the point still remains. There's still more ugly than just removing our way of viewing life. We have to let God dig it all out and scrape us until we feel like a skeleton. We may feel bare, but it's because God's tearing away the bad to put in the light that can consume us. I know when people become believers they often feel alone in the beginning. It's because you're going through the scraping process that hurts. But think about it- if you don't get all the junk out of the pumpkin it stinks and the excess could catch on fire from the flame. God graciously makes His light bigger than our junk and allows it to consume anything we could try and smooth back on to ourselves in sin.

It's an interesting comparison when I think about it. Interesting that the ordinary things in life, the traditions and daily functions, might actually hold symbolance to a higher order and a better way of living life.