Ben's last thoughts. So why help send someone half way around the world to dig trenches, deliver gifts and food, and meet and love on people? Why not just send money, or stay at home and do those things here? Well, I think it has something to do with the essence of who God is and what His love is all about. There is a Bob Dylan song that says it in a way that breaks my heart and causes me to cry every single time I hear it (this can be frustrating sometimes). The lyrics go something like this "...I'd go hungry, I'd go black and blue. I'd go crawlin' down the avenue. There is nothin' that I wouldn't do, to make you feel my love."
I think people need to know that they are valued enough that someone would go to the ends of the earth for them. That someone sees them as so valuable that they would be willing to sacrifice at great lengths to be a vessel that knows God's love for them and wants to pour it out on them in some tangible way. I believe that this kind of personal touch is the only thing that saved and changed my life. Those who saw my value and the love God had for me and did whatever it took, both small and large, to personally express that love. I have been so moved and changed by these "acts" of love that I am often consumed with wanting others to know that same wild love of God that Dylan sings of. Maybe it is just God singing to me the lines "There is nothin' that I wouldn't do, to make you feel my love" and "you ain't seen nothin' like me yet". That kind of love is the reason to go and the reason to send, it is the reason to sacrifice and the reason to receive, it is the only reason I have found to live.
thank you all so much for loving with wild abandon
Ben
