This morning is blue-fully clear as honking horns from the morning traffic float up to me on the 18th floor. Surrounding our building are countless other apartment complexes attempting, most in vain, to challenge the 29 floors stacked up to make this one. I look out over the street and just beyond a small park the Yellow Sea stretches endlessly before me. This will be my home for the next 5 weeks. Incredible. One of the greatest things about this place, besides the view :), is our whole group being together. Yep, all 11 of us split between two rooms, a small kitchen, and one bathroom, which should definitely be interesting. The room I’m in, along with the other 5 girls, doubles as a community room. Two oversized couches frame the tall windows opposite our bunk beds, giving way to a single glass door leading out to the balcony, where I sit now. The structure of this morning is no different from the others before it. We all crawled out of bed for an early breakfast together, proceeding to shuffle through bathroom turns in a somewhat orderly fashion (“BATHROOM ANYONE?!”), and on into the girl room for teamtime; one of many to come. What will mark this morning in my mind and heart is what I begin to feel as I look out across the street into the park. 
Each morning, about this same time, a group of older Chinese men and women dance in the park. You can see anything from the tango, to classic ballroom dancing to, “I not quite sure what that guy’s doing, but ‘good job’ to him for going for it....” It’s fun to watch. I’ve been watching them for a few minutes and I get blasted with this weighty revelation. GOD LOVES THEM. NO, HE REALLY LOVES THEM. Each and every one of them. He. Loves. Them. His heart burns so deeply and they have no idea.... They just dance away, twirling one another round and round, sometimes for exercise and other times for enjoyment. God is probably the furthest thing from their minds right now, and yet that doesn’t change the fact that HE LOVES EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. It doesn’t even matter that they may not know ever come to know Him. He LOVES them WHERE they are, AS they are. Wow.
It seems so simple and matter of fact, but to actually get to feel a sprinkle of that love for someone; to feel HIS love for THEM. It’s enough to wreck a person. I know it did me. I shared this with my team when we met back together but hardly got started before I just broke down. This overwhelming sense of His love for others moved me to tears (and I am not much of a crier. God, however, is softening my heart :). I can’t imagine loving someone, anyone, so completely and deeply, so infinitely, especially without knowing if that love will be reciprocated. Yet that is how He loves. And His love doesn’t change. It is, has been, and will always be. Complete. Deep. Infinite. FREE. He can’t turn it off, even when we turn Him off. And to take this even further, that powerful revelation of His depth for those Chinese people is the same deep love He has for me, and for YOU. Whoa. We “know” this, but do we believe it? And by believing it do we allow ourselves to receive it? And in receiving do we let it into our day so it changes how we see ourselves and others, ultimately changing how we live? I really hope so.
After this experience I am more convinced not just of the power of God’s love, but of my need to learn more of to what this love is. Maybe a new prayer can be “Lord, help me learn to love the ways you love. To have as complete of a love as me, a broken human can have, and to love in ways that are deeply infinite. To love in ways that are pure and heavenly.” I’m not sure I know what that means or will look like, but from the little bit He’s shown me I now know it too good not to pursue in one way or another.
Each morning, about this same time, a group of older Chinese men and women dance in the park. You can see anything from the tango, to classic ballroom dancing to, “I not quite sure what that guy’s doing, but ‘good job’ to him for going for it....” It’s fun to watch. I’ve been watching them for a few minutes and I get blasted with this weighty revelation. GOD LOVES THEM. NO, HE REALLY LOVES THEM. Each and every one of them. He. Loves. Them. His heart burns so deeply and they have no idea.... They just dance away, twirling one another round and round, sometimes for exercise and other times for enjoyment. God is probably the furthest thing from their minds right now, and yet that doesn’t change the fact that HE LOVES EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM. It doesn’t even matter that they may not know ever come to know Him. He LOVES them WHERE they are, AS they are. Wow.
It seems so simple and matter of fact, but to actually get to feel a sprinkle of that love for someone; to feel HIS love for THEM. It’s enough to wreck a person. I know it did me. I shared this with my team when we met back together but hardly got started before I just broke down. This overwhelming sense of His love for others moved me to tears (and I am not much of a crier. God, however, is softening my heart :). I can’t imagine loving someone, anyone, so completely and deeply, so infinitely, especially without knowing if that love will be reciprocated. Yet that is how He loves. And His love doesn’t change. It is, has been, and will always be. Complete. Deep. Infinite. FREE. He can’t turn it off, even when we turn Him off. And to take this even further, that powerful revelation of His depth for those Chinese people is the same deep love He has for me, and for YOU. Whoa. We “know” this, but do we believe it? And by believing it do we allow ourselves to receive it? And in receiving do we let it into our day so it changes how we see ourselves and others, ultimately changing how we live? I really hope so.
After this experience I am more convinced not just of the power of God’s love, but of my need to learn more of to what this love is. Maybe a new prayer can be “Lord, help me learn to love the ways you love. To have as complete of a love as me, a broken human can have, and to love in ways that are deeply infinite. To love in ways that are pure and heavenly.” I’m not sure I know what that means or will look like, but from the little bit He’s shown me I now know it too good not to pursue in one way or another.
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