Love Does: Sniper Fire

Chapter 2 of Love Does

"I used to think I had to act a certain way to follow God, but now I know God doesn't want us to be typical."

Typical.

Bob shares about his first encounter with Jesus and it didn't come through a lot of talking or preaching, but through watching someone live life who was a follower of Jesus. Bob was in high school hanging out with Doug and doing things boys do: shoot BB guns. Along the way of playing, Doug shot Bob in the belly. "I liked how Doug could be friends with Jesus and still shoot pellet guns."

Following Jesus may begin as a person being typical. But, intense intimacy with Jesus results in people not being typical. We are real with life and faith. Our love for people transcends all that we thought. Jesus changes us into fully loving and fully living creatures.

To be honest, I'm not sure what this means. I never thought of myself as being typical. Does typical mean traditional? Does it mean that we don't put people or ourselves in a box and think, "God can only work within the confines of that situation?" Does it mean that we stop trying to please the church and what they deem acceptable behavior?

Jesus didn't speak to typical people. He went to the poor, the suffering, the outcasts, the unpopular. When the rich or literate did come his way he generally showed them what they had gained was not what he was necessarily looking for in a person.

Maybe the key really is just to be yourself and not care what people think about you.

The other big reminder from this reading is life does need to be lived and people will see more of what you do than what you say (yet our words can't contradict our living).

It reminds me of a great t-shirt we had at college: Walk=Talk