God Loves Through Us!

In my line of vision every morning as I pray is a statue of St. Francis; in his hand are two small birds to whom he seems to be speaking.  At his feet is a small lamb and there is a wolf curled against his right leg, looking up at him.  Every time I see this statue, I think that God is loving His creatures through St. Francis.  And then I glance beyond the statue to my back yard, filled with the trees I have cultivated, the plants I have sown, and the grass that I tend weekly.  I love all these things because I have cultivated them -- and because they bring me so much joy and peace every day.

One of my favorite prayers is "Holy Spirit, think Your thoughts in me until Your thoughts become my thoughts."  Once we begin to allow the Spirit of God to breathe through us, think through us, act through us, our vision changes and we begin to see from His perspective.  I cannot think of a better "vocation" than to allow God to love His creation and His creatures through us -- through our eyes, through our minds, through our actions.  What if we could every day say what He wants us to say, do what He wants us to do, go where He wants us to go, and give away what He wants us to give away?

Of course, that means that our "old man," or the "natural man," as St. Paul calls it, must gradually fade away -- and be buried, in fact.  Our natural antipathies cannot be in charge if God is to love His creatures through us.  I remember one time complaining to our prayer group about someone in our neighborhood that bothered me a lot.  In fact, when I would see this guy in front of his house, I would pray that he would stay on his side of the street and not come over to talk to me.  I didn't like feeling this way about anyone, but my "old man"  -- the flesh-- just wanted nothing to do with him.

One of the members of the group suggested that I pray about my feelings (instead of praying that he would stay on his side of the street).  So the next time I was working in my yard and I saw him, I began to place my feelings before God.  Almost immediately, I heard the words in my spirit:  How can you be a blessing to him?  Now this was most definitely NOT what I wanted to hear!  But it made me begin to think along entirely different lines.

I remembered how much he had admired one of my plants which had orange blooms.  He loved the color orange!  So I dug up part of that plant, put it in a nice pot, and brought it over to him. He was clearly touched at the kindness -- evidently most of the other neighbors had been avoiding him the same way I had been doing.  In the conversation that followed, he ended up telling me about a motorcycle accident that had killed his best friend when he was a teen.  The accident was his fault, and it has haunted him all his life.

That conversation has now haunted me.  I have begun to see him not so much as a nuisance but more as a lonely person who has no friends.  I still don't want to be his best friend, but I think my "old man" is beginning to die a little in this regard, and the "new man" created in Jesus Christ is beginning to surface.  How wonderful it would be if we could allow God to love His creatures through us!