My mom usually takes it upon herself to pass along any and all news concerning fellow John Battle High graduates. Most of the time, I have no idea who they are, but this week, she passed along an obit for a girl a few years younger than me that happened to be the younger sister to one of my better friends from my early high school years. (That was quite a sentence.) She was kind of the type of girl you just knew was headed for some kind of trouble, but my heart broke when I saw that she had OD’d on something or another.
When I told my mom I had known her, she tried calling me later and left a voice mail advising me to use discretion if I had planned on contacting the family. “They’re into drugs and stuff, Matthew, so you probably don’t want them to know where you live.” That’s my mom for you. I certainly don’t mean to rip on her, but that’s the kind of environment I grew up in. Thankfully, my mom is a believer and active in her church…but I’m not entirely sure if that means a lot. I left that church because, quite frankly, it was what we at Watermark would consider a “dead church.” That’s been years ago, of course…and I hear the new pastor has definitely shaken things up, so I can’t speak with credibility about it now.
What my mom and most of the churched in my hometown (including most in the church I’ve been active in whenever home) don’t get is that peoples’ lives are messy. My life is messy. Your life is messy. And if we, as believers all have messy lives in some form or another, why would we ever consider that the lives of unbelievers are any less so?
They need Jesus too. And no, they do NOT have to put on a shirt and tie to be loved by him.
THIS RANT by Gary Lamb hits one out of the park on this issue. I found myself yelling “PREACH IT!” while reading it because he says what I’ve been trying to articulate for years. I hope his words admonish and encourage every one of us as we are all called to minister to the sick and hurting and lost…and yes, even the addicts.
Let’s get after it.
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