The Love of God Is Folly

Hello All,
Well, after losing the first version of this post, perhaps you´ll get a more direct version this time. I feel as if I don´t even know where to begin. Today has been unbelievable and so God-directed.
The day began with much dying. I have been praying for a long time that God would teach me how to love--and so He is, through a situation that has caused me much vulnerability and has required much painful, obedient honesty, leading to many tears in the process.

I remember marveling at Alvin´s supernatural love the first time we ever did street ministry with him a few years ago. He loves those kids and pours his life out for them even as they reject him and his invitation for a better life. He has known some of those kids for 13 years and still has yet to see a change in their lifestyles. His love for them knows no conditions. He doesn´t withhold love from them even though they continue to reject a better life and continue to sell their bodies in prostitution, still are high on glue, or refuse to believe that God has better for them (even though Alvin is demonstrating His love right in front of their faces). Alvin loves in the face of rejection, and to me, this is real love.

Real love goes hand-in-hand with truth and obedience. It is easy to love and tell the truth when it is acceptable to the situation, when it doesn´t cost us anything, or when it is reciprocated and believed. It is wildly difficult to love obediently when we´re rejected, made to look stupid, or when it costs us our pride. It is difficult to tell the truth when we know that there is a high probability that it is a painful truth or a truth that no one else will believe.

God has been dealing with me about my pride. It is one of those things that desperately needs to die in me so that I can have a humble heart. I have such a pride in my own self-sufficiency, in my ability to be independent, in my capacity to protect myself from vulnerability and to be untouchable. One mild example of this happened yesterday, and while I don´t know that it bothered the other girls, it crushed me. We three teachers were walking in Esperanza when we passed a young boy who said something to us in Spanish. On a regular basis, we get yelled at, hissed at, kissed at, harrassed, etc. by males of all ages. Thus, it has become our habit to just ignore everyone because it is impossible to know the intentions of the other person. We don´t want to send an invitation just by being polite. In this case as well, we kept walking, ignoring the boy. It wasn´t until we passed him that I realized what his question was--What time is it? I was devastated and convicted that I had literally refused to give someone the time of day simply as a means of protecting myself. It was a terrible realization and made me understand that there is no need for me to ignore anyone. God is fully capable of protecting me from any results of a kind hello. I don´t think Jesus ignored anyone, and I shouldn´t either.

So, as I said, God has been dealing with me in regard to pride. I don´t like being vulnerable. I hate it because I feel exposed. Real love always requires vulnerability though as well as transparency and obedience. I was just pouring out my heart to God earlier today, whining about how I felt embarrassed and humiliated, rejected and used, and in the midst of my brokenness, He reminded me--the love of God is folly. God led me to my old journal and my entries from early May before I left. I had been reading The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning and included the following excerpt:
Don´t try to feel anything, think anything, or do anything. With all the goodwill in the world you cannot make anything happen. Don´t force prayer. Simply relax in the presence of the God you half believe in and ask for a touch of folly.

An Indian poem by Tagore:
No, it is not yours to open buds to blossom,
Shake the bud, strike it,
It is beyond your power to make it blossom.
Your touch soils it.
You tear its petals to pieces and strew them into the dust,
But no colors appear and no perfume.
Oh, it is not for you to open the bud into blossom!
He who can open the bud does it so simply.
He gives it a glance and the life sap stirs through its veins.
At his breath the flower spreads its wings
And flutters in the wind.
Colors flash out like heart longing, the perfume betrays a sweet secret.
He who can open the bud does it so simply.

Lámour de Dieu est folie! -- The love of God is folly.

The following day, I aptly had pasted the following fortune from a fortune cookie as a good reminder: The greatest risk is not taking one.

That word, folly, means ´´the state or quality of being foolish; stupidity; a lack of good sense.´´ Operating in the real love of God often means that we are going to look stupid to the world. We´re supposed to look like idiots when we´re walking in God´s obedient love. God brought me to the story of Noah to remind me of this. Naturally, Noah looked stupid while he was being obedient and building the ark out of love for God. But, what interested me more was the folly of God and His love in that story. The whole reason for the flood was that all of God´s creation was full of evil except for Noah. God had painstakingly taken time to create human beings in His image to love Him and serve Him, and all but one and his family were living selfishly and disobeying. He had lovingly poured life into humans, and none of them except Noah and his family loved Him back. In the world´s terms, doesn´t that make God look stupid, rejected, humiliated? Yet, God was not embarrassed; He just decided to start over with the one family that did love Him.

Thus, with all of these revelations in mind and a new prayer in my heart that God would give me a touch of folly, I set out for the center of town to go here, to the internet cafe. I got a mere three or four houses down when I saw an old woman dressed in indigenous clothes walking laboriously with a cane--and she had no shoes. There is a split second of time when we see the struggle of another person when we assess how involved we are willing to be--is this their problem or am I willing to make it mine? For a few seconds, I kept walking, thinking, deciding, and thoughts of my own shoes flooded my head. I turned around. I began talking to the old lady who had one solitary tooth hanging from her gums, and I couldn´t understand a word of what she was saying although she understood me. I asked her if I could buy her a pair of shoes. I offered mine, but as she was a tiny woman, they would have been huge on her. She agreed to sit and wait on the sidewalk while I bought her a pair of shoes. I hustled off with a mission, not knowing exactly where I would fine a pair.

I went to the closest store I found and ran into the sixth grade teacher from Chiligatoro. The look that she gave me as I bought a tiny pair of shoes (that obviously wouldn´t fit me) was priceless, and I began to sense the beauty of folly. I took the shoes back to the woman and knelt before her, placing them on her filthy feet. One of them fit, but the other did not--her foot was swollen, and she was suffering immense pain. As I was talking to her, numerous people were passing by and staring (more than the usual stares I get for being a blonde gringa). One man stopped and gave the viejita money and managed to talk to her enough for me that we found out the name of the person with whom she lives. She was lost.

I told her I would go buy another pair of shoes that would fit better, and I thought I could perhaps find a taxi so that she could ride to her home although I still didn´t know where she lived. (There was no way she was walking home.) I went back the same store where the woman was very helpful although quite dumbfounded by my requests. I also wandered around until I found a taxi, but he left without coming to the old lady since he expected us to walk to him. I brought the second pair of shoes to her and placed them on her feet. They fit. Then, I told her I would go find another taxi, hoping that she´d be able to point out to the driver where she lived even if she didn´t remember the name. I wandered around to the center of town and found a taxi. When he saw the woman, he said that he had seen her before, and she hadn´t seemed to know where she lived. He suggested that I call the police to help her and left. I don´t know how to call the police here. Go figure.

When I came back to her, she had begun walking again--without wearing the shoes. She said they hurt her foot too much, but she was happy to carry them. One of the men from the family where I live came over at this point and started talking to the lady and to me, trying to find out what was going on. It is pretty crazy for a tall, pale, blonde gringa to be holding the hand of a wrinkled old lady in indigenous clothing, with no shoes, no teeth, and a cane. People stopped and asked if I knew her. People stopped and asked what I was doing. No one really stuck around to help though. The man from the house managed to find out from the old lady which barrio she lived in. It was located very far away--45 minutes by bus. How this shoeless, little old woman made it to Calvary from her home 45 minutes away is beyond me. The man got a taxi for us and told me that the taxi could take us to the bus, which could then take her home.

The taxi driver was very talkative. He asked all kinds of questions about me and wanted me to marry him so that he could go to the US. Ha ha. No thank you. He helped us find the bus, but he dropped us off across a four-way stop. While this normally wouldn´t have been a problem for me (how often do I take walking for granted?!), it was a painstakingly long walk for the abuelita. We were in the middle of the market, and as we crossed the street at a snail´s pace, I felt all eyes on us. I was so afraid that the bus was going to leave before we got there even as I could see it, but it didn´t. I helped her climb up the stairs and walked her to her seat. As we hobbled by, everyone on the bus whispered, ´´Pobrecita! Mira la gringita con la viejita!´´ or ´´Poor thing! Look at the little white girl with the little old lady!´´ It astounds me that everyone will offer a word of sympathy, but how many would have passed her without a bit of action? And how had I almost passed her without taking on her burden as my own? I gave her the shoes, the food she´d been carrying, and money for her bus fare. She gave me a beautiful, gummy grin, and I stooped to hug her and kiss her on her cheek. She kissed me back and mumbled a string of thankful, joyful words that I still didn´t understand. I left her on the bus, assured by the driver that she was going to right place, and I walked home fighting tears.

I saw Jesus in that little old woman in a way that I have never seen Him in someone else before. As I stooped in front of her, cupping her crusty, swollen feet in my hands, I felt so humbled that God had allowed this woman to cross my path just to show me that the love of God is folly--a joyous, beautiful folly! And what if I would have kept walking? What if I would have been too embarrassed to turn around and talk to the abuelita? What if I would have ignored her just as I ignored that little boy who only wanted to know the time? We got stares. We got whispers. We got yells and whistles. We got all kinds of attention, and I was thought to be quite crazy. But the love of God is folly, and how humbling a privilege that He let me experience the wonder of His folly through this little old woman?

Just as the Indian poem states, only God can open a blossom. Only God can work in the hearts of others, but He calls us to be the vessel of love and to plant the seed so there is something for Him to lead to blossoming. He calls us to this love even when it costs us our pride, our time, and our sense of self-protection. Lámour de Dieu est folie!

Embracing the folly,
Sarah