“The rich became poor and the poor became rich.”

 

“We visited a village where the feeding program . . . operated a one-meal-a-day program. . . .  They don’t have the money to feed anyone over age 14 except expectant mothers. . . .”

 

Thus writes Beth Moore about a trip she and her husband took to Angola, Africa, to visit villages involved in, or in need of, feeding programs.

 

There the Moores had an experience almost identical to ours (if you missed my blog post, click on “I still tear up when I think of it—it seemed so wrong, so unnecessary.” It’s a must-read!)

Beth writes that when she and her husband prepared to leave,

 

"I was ushered before the head of the community and his wife. . . . Her white teeth gleamed in the African sun as she smiled ear to ear. She then proudly thrust a bowl toward me that rocked with small eggs. Eggs they needed and that I didn’t."

 

Remember what Beth said:

Those dear folks didn’t have enough money

to feed anyone over age 14 except expectant mothers—

yet they gave to Beth and her husband.

How humbling!

 

Beth continues:

 

"I was taken aback. I wanted to shake my head and insist she keep them, but she was so exuberant in her offering that I couldn’t. With untamed joy they gave a portion of exorbitant expense out of the portion God had given them."

 

Read that again: “With untamed joy they gave a portion of exorbitant expense out of the portion God had given them.”

 

Those dear Angolans were living, breathing, smiling examples of 2 Corinthians 9:7—they didn’t give reluctantly or under pressure, and indeed “God loves a cheerful giver!”

 

Beth admits that as they drove out of the village,

 

"I felt a deep and painful sense of my own poverty. I knew I was poor in my giving. Poor in my sacrificing. Poor in my daily expression of God’s giving heart and woefully rich in all things self.

 

"That day on the edge of the world’s nowhere, God wrote His signature on the sandy ground in the shape of a circular arrow.

 

"I was stricken by the absurdity of an unexpected turnabout. . .  . There before my eyes, the rich became poor and the poor became rich" (Beth Moore, Esther: It’s Tough Being a Woman).

 

Perhaps you’ve experienced something similar.

 

“If the Lord is indeed our shepherd,” writes Frederick Buechner, “then everything goes topsy-turvy. Losing becomes finding and crying becomes laughing. The last become first and the weak become strong” (The Clown in the Belfry).

 

If we pay attention, God gives you and me opportunities to examine our hearts and minds.  Sometimes He does that by upsetting the apple cart—by turning us upside down and inside out and giving us a good shaking in the same way He did for Beth Moore.

 

When He does, how do we respond?

 

“Most of us . . . confront a need for greater self-awareness,” writes Joan Anderson. “We reach a point when . . . the dreams of earlier times seem shallow and pointless. And then we find ourselves asking the tough questions: What am I meant to do now? What really matters? Who am I?” (Joan Anderson, The Second Journey: The Road Back to Yourself)

 

Sheer bliss in being loved and loving back

Young Mary humbled herself, broke open an alabaster jar, and poured costly perfume over Jesus’ head.

Guests in the room, indignant, scolded her for the waste.

But Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She did what she could. Wherever the Good News is preached throughout the world, this woman’s deed will be remembered.”

In her small but powerful book, She Did What She Could: Five Words of Jesus that Will Change Your Life, author Elisa Morgan sheds light on Mark 14:3-9 for us.

Jesus loved Mary—and Mary knew it.

Mary carried out an extravagant, expensive act of worship because she loved Jesus—and Jesus knew it.

Elisa said,

Mary had

“absorbed in her soul

how very much he truly cared.”

“She acted out of her love. She knew that Jesus loved her, and she loved him back. She lived loved,” writes Elisa. “That’s the whole point of the gospel, isn’t it?”

Lloyd Ogilvie tells the story of meeting with a friend who was usually grumpy, a man with a negative attitude. But one day, his friend acted like a new person. “His face was radiant, his voice had a lilt to it, and he was full of fun. ’What happened to you?’ I asked.

“He burst out the good news, ‘She loves me!’ The lady he’d dated for years finally confessed her love for him, leaving him a radically changed man. “It’s amazing! Being loved, really knowing you’re loved, gives me a wonderful feeling of freedom.” (Silent Strength for My Life)

Think back to a time when someone acknowledged his or her deep, abiding love for you.

How did that love change you?

I’m guessing it melted your heart—even remade your heart. Your anxieties lessened, you relaxed around him or her, and life seemed so good, so right, so settled. Your perspective on everything changed for the better. And you wanted to express your gratitude and love in return, right?

Ogilvie continues,

“Now multiply the finest expression of human love

ten million times

and you have just begun to experience

the unlimited love the Lord has for us.”

Read that again.

The Bible describes God’s love for us

as unfailing (Psalm 6:4)

and everlasting (Jeremiah 31:3).

“Thinking about this love, building our whole lives around it,” Ogilvie says, “makes us joyous people who are free to enjoy life. It makes us free to give ourselves away, free to care, free to dare.”

Ogilvie’s talking about people who, in Elisa’s words, “live loved.”  

And that brings us back to the past two week’s posts about our Old Testament friend, David, who lived loved.

David was just an imperfect guy like the rest of us. “He had feet of clay like the rest of us if not more so—self-serving and deceitful, lustful and vain,” writes Frederick Buechner, (Peculiar Treasures), but God in His unfailing, everlasting love, forgave him and transformed him. And called David a man after His own heart. And used him in mighty ways.

Once David grasped the enormity of God’s love for him, he responded with an overflowing love for God. David delighted in knowing God loved him and, as a result, David yearned to please God.

I have no doubt that because David lived loved, he longed to accomplish God’s purposes for his life, his generation.

Neither David nor Mary did what they did because

of a sense of duty or obligation or fear that,

if they failed to live up to God’s expectations,

they’d pay a price.

Instead, it was all about love,

utter bliss in being loved and loving back.

We—you and I—can make a difference in our world, for our generation, by living like David and Mary: by humbly carrying out God’s specific, unique purposes for our lives—as an act of love.

Elisa wrote, “…We—any of us—can change our world when we finally ‘get’ how much we are loved in a relationship with God. God’s love changes us. Radically. All of us. And when we are different, we make a difference in our world.”

Seventeen years before Dave and I moved to Africa, we lived at a remote mission center in Colombia, South America, working with Wycliffe Bible Translators (the same organization we worked with in Africa). There we worked with amazing colleagues, people who had asked themselves something similar to what Elisa Morgan asked: 

“What if I believed God loved me so much 

that I wanted to love Him back by doing what I could?”

A few months after arriving there, 

“I was beginning to realize how much that bunch lived on the edge, especially our administrators and those working in and traveling to some of the world’s most isolated communities—our linguists and pilots. They were willing to take risks. Big risks. They had given their hearts to God who, in return, gave them a burning desire to go, even when it meant living dangerously. They offered Him their skills, careers, resources, families, and even their lives” (from Chapter 14 of my memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir, by Linda K. Thomas).

How’s that for living loved?

Yes, they lived loved, but remember:

They were just ordinary folks—

like you, like me—

slogging along because of God’s grace.

Fourteen years after leaving our jobs in South America, Dave and I moved to Africa where we met hundreds more people there who were just ordinary folks slogging along because of God’s grace, people who were living loved.

To paraphrase Elisa, 

have you absorbed in your soul 

how very much God truly loves you?

Marie Chapian urges us to see ourselves 

the way God sees us. 

“If you were to think of yourself 

as I think of you, 

how different you would be” 

(His Thoughts Toward Me).

Let’s live loved, dear friends!

If we did, what would that look like?