Dying

Love... What does love look like? What is sacrifice? What is the cost of love? What are you willing to do or give up in order to love someone? "Anything for family "... But what about that stranger over there?... What does it mean to die to self? "I'm just a little woman dying in the dirt." says Heidi Baker, a woman who has spent her life loving the poor around the world. Dying in the dirt. I love the dirt. And I love being with the poorest of the poor, the smelly, the homeless, the abandoned, the lost. I love to sit in the dirt and play with a child. To let go of stereotypes and modern day comforts and just love. At times it may be hard, but I love to die in the dirt. There is pretty much nothing I'd rather do. But right now, I'm not in the dirt. Right now I'm in America,,, "The land of opportunity"... I'm well dressed, well fed, and working in retail. I sell overpriced clothing and credit cards to people who really don't need either. And I hate it. Come on, where is my dirt?! And then it hit me...right now I am not a little woman dying in the dirt, I am a little woman dying in the city. To be more exact, I am a little woman dying in the mall. It is not a sacrifice for me to be at the ends of the earth and loving on people there... But it is a sacrifice for me to love the poor person standing on the other side of my cash register... Poor in spirit is still poor, my darling. How do I expect to love the person in the dirt if I can't love the one in the mall? Does my love have limits? Are some people better than others? More important? Instead of being too poor, are they just too rich? Too rude? Too... Western? How do I even love them? I have no clue. I thought I knew how to love (how pompous is that?!) but I was wrong. How did Jesus do it? How did He love both the Samaritan woman and the rich young ruler with the same passion? And how do I then follow suite?... I suppose that to truly love, you must know true Love. To know God is to know Love. God is Love. He is the definition. To know how to love, I must know what love truly is... I must be closer, more intimate, more familiar with who He is... And then out of that, I shall love better, fuller, richer, deeper. The more time I spend around Him, the more loving I believe I shall become. I have come to this conclusion from the mere fact that when I am around nice people, I tend to be nicer. When I am around mean people (consistently), I tend to be meaner. It rubs off on you. So if I want to become a more loving person, I must be around Love. And I must die. A seed must die for a tree to grow. So here I am, dying in the mall... so I may be called an oak of righteousness