Agape

I have a confession to make: I'm not doing it right.

Sure, I try. Sure, I do everything I can to ensure that I try to catch every opportunity to minister that comes my way. But on the road from here to there, I've discovered something.

First of all, understand this is about me and my journey. It's not about your journey, and not meant to be a judgment or a condemnation in any sense. If it helps you on your journey, take it, use it. But this is about my journey and my own observations.

I noticed a group of "dirty kids" in the parking lot today. I ambled over to help them because I know that a lot of folks won't. And because I genuinely have come to love the ones I've met, and figure that maybe that dollar I give the ones I come across will be paid forward just enough to scratch the palm of the fellow I met six months ago on the road to Santa Fe. Or the young couple busking on the corner of a dusty street.

And when I'm walking away, I can't help but think of all of the opportunities I've missed. The people who inflicted genuine hurt, genuine pain that I refused to simply pile up at the cross. The fellow who cheated me on the car deal a ways back. The family whose inaction towards their own family member's actions brought about a very dark period I wasn't sure I would quickly escape. Those people.

The people just as deserving, just as in need, just as missing of a vital piece of their lives.

I remember some years back when encountering a child with Down Syndrome. This kid was, as most I've met with Down Syndrome, incredibly loving, but had a serious drool problem. And I have a serious aversion to such things. As he reached his arms around me and I felt the slimey drool on my arms, and on my clothes, I realized that I could not in any way outwardly express this aversion for fear of hurting the feelings of the young man. I returned the embrace, the inner cringe slowly starting to release, as I realized it was for just these  occasions that soap and water were invented.

And when he walked away, I found myself in not so big a rush for soap and water. The kid had taught me a lot.

Agape love, true love, is sometimes dirty, sometimes nasty, sometimes the epitome of what we fear. But it is always right and it is never focused on self.

May I learn to be an agent, not of compassion, but of genuine, heartfelt, agape love. May I get it right.