Not Safe, but Good?

So, the sermon today was about God's particular love for us, His children, within our particular stories (which He has authored), within our particular personalities (which He designed), with our particular fears and wounds (which He is redeeming) and with our particular strengths and skills (which He will use for His glory - by fish belly or otherwise...nod to Jonah).  More than simply His particular love for us, the sermon on Pentecost highlighted that the diversity of "native tongues" is in focus and each are able to encounter the Good News of the person and work of Jesus in their own native tongue (which includes everything just mentioned about our particularities).  And, as a response, we now get to have the greatest reunion with all those in His family from whom we have been separated!  We can now love because He first loved us and others can know about what He has done for us when they see us extend this same kind of unreasonable love toward others.

This Good News is simultaneously exhilarating and depressing.  Its exhilarating because it tells me that all those things that divide me from people (race, language, level of education or income, social customs, dress, affiliations, etc.) are no longer barriers to our unity in the person and work of Jesus.  (For we all stand equally in need of His redemption - none more deserving of His grace than another and none less in need of His mercy than another.)  But, its depressing because if I'm totally honest, I don't want to have hang out with all of those "other" people.  If I'm even more honest, deep down where I don't even always know it, I believe that my days are my own, that my time is mine and that life owes me "me time". 

Some of those "others" will need me too much and demand more of me than I have any interest in even being asked to give, let alone actually give.  Some of those "others" won't need me as much as I think they should, and that throws the whole security of my existence into question and creates in me a need for a defense.  I am naturally drawn to people who will give me life...which sometimes looks like someone utterly out of my daily context.  But even their differentness is appealing to the extent it feeds my need.  But the awkward girl who is out of a job and doesn't have much in the way of a social life, well, that could be dangerous because talk about a potential time suck - MY time, mind you.

What if the empowering of the Holy Spirit wasn't given so that we could attain more down time but so that I could actually be interested in the person who my community (starting with me) has written off?  What if my resources and talents weren't given so that I could "get mine" but so that I could meet the needs of others as Jesus consistently and unreasonably and sacrificially meets my needs?  What if my time doesn't actually belong to me at all?  What if I am not "entitled" to "me time" as much as I want my husband and children to believe?  What if I could serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead of a gourmet meal so that I would be quicker to invite people into my home?  What if He wants to push me out of my ten-year-plan and into His Kingdom plan? 

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.  1 John 3:16

Now by "lay down", I hope He means give a community service day here and there because I can do that.  Or maybe by "lay down" it means sending some much needed money to an organization who knows their audience's needs far better than I.  But if by "lay down" He means the way that Jesus did it...well, surely not, right?  He left His CEO position to be counted as "the help".  He didn't leave every conversation with the person thinking He was right.  He tried to get away for rest, but kept serving anyway.  He loved not for what He needed from the people (because He was totally satisfied in the Father and His Spirit) but because He had the only genuine love the world has ever known - no mixed motives at all.

This makes my chest tighten, honestly.  It makes my breathing shorter.  It makes me a little angry, a lot tired, and mostly want to go to bed and start tomorrow with this whole topic fading into "last week's sermon topic was..."  It scares me.  I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to change.  What is rational and what is crazy and what is eccentric and what is the Gospel?

Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 1 Peter 1:17-19

We are reading through Narnia with Ellie and Chad, and Ellie is really stumped by the oft quoted description of Aslan as being "not safe but good".  She keeps asking how he can be both.  I try to explain in bits and make her wrestle with it for times.  But really, when I read about the person and work of Jesus in all of Scripture, I see how increasingly unsafe He is, following Him is and I hesitate.  But ultimately, I can trust that He is true and that He is good.  If He is calling me out of my safe kingdom and into His, He will do it and that is Good News.