"we redeem those that we love"

Jesus, as the perfect example of evangelism and discipleship, did it first and did it best: in the quiet, away from the crowds, he sought the marginalized and hurting who were on the fringes and on the edges and He healed them. He sought people, and not a platform, and He suddenly found Himself with both. I think sometimes we want influence without sacrifice, but one is not had without the other.

Jesus trained His disciples by asking them to join Him in His service. He did not stand back and direct them to do while He supervised. That would have made them slaves. He got His hands dirty and He was up to His elbows in work. The most compelling examples are those who are modeling and not just telling. This is why Jesus healed and offered physical relief coupled with spiritual hope.

The disciples learned by listening to His teaching - not only to them specifically, but also to the crowds. The way that Jesus raised up disciples was by feeding them (physically and spiritually), washing their feet as an act of service to them, and dying to Himself to both enable and necessitate their own service and sacrifice. It's incomprehensible, really - the way that everything He said was powerful, and everything He did was even more powerful.

At a wedding yesterday, the closing words were this: "We redeem those that we love." The implications of this are innumerable. For those that we love, we will do so much - give extra grace, bail them out, sacrifice for them, overlook their faults. We exchange their bad qualities for good, and we choose to view them differently than they really are, in a lot of ways. Redemption is compensation - and so there has to be a price paid somewhere.

The price was paid. We know that. We have been redeemed by the blood of Jesus, because He loved us.

So when we seek to redeem others - we are only giving back what we've already owed Jesus all along. Our life given in exchange for the life of another is the way we join Him in His work here. Setting aside our comfort, need, and agenda in order to use those resources on someone else instead sets an unforgettable example. People do not remember what we say; they do remember how they feel when they are around us.

I'm writing all this as a reminder to myself: to see people, to know people, to hear people, and to serve people "not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free." (Ephesians 6). To look into the eyes of others, to listen and not to instantly juxtapose my story onto theirs, to assume I don't understand but be willing to love anyway, and to remember always that there is always more to the story.

And also as a reminder that it's probably time to re-read "A Tale of Two Cities": "Think now and then that there is a man who would give his life, to keep a life you love beside you"

And this from Les Miserables - "To love another person is to see the face of God."