LESSON FIVE: LOVE
I experienced something profound in Malawi. I treasure Jesus’ commandment, “Love one another.” I believe that it truly is the greatest commandment. It is the pinnacle of what Jesus embodied and taught.
I vividly remember an Andy Stanley sermon from the Orange Conference a few years ago, in which he stated that whenever the church leverages love it advances and whenever it leverages something other than love it gets off-course. I’ve observed the Church “leveraging something other than love” over and over again in American culture as churches align themselves politically or engage in cultural wars over various issues. It seems that we too often get sucked into leveraging “being right.”
This time, though, at a small hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, I observed the church leveraging love.
You see, I spent a week serving at CURE hospital. CURE International in an amazing organization. It is overtly Christian. It unabashedly promotes Jesus as Savior and King but it leverages this message through the gifts of physically healing children and treating people with dignity and respect.
CURE in Malawi employs several Muslims and they love working for CURE. There are prominent Muslim families who support CURE financially because they believe in their values and mission. Did you catch that? That just doesn’t happen! They donate their hard earned money to support an infidel hospital because it loves children so well.
Muslim families have become Christ-followers because CURE representatives came to their villages, professionally and relationally demonstrated how they could heal their child’s club foot or cleft palate, and then did so–caring for their family with dignity and love throughout the entire process.
Across the world, Islam and Christianity are at war. The news in Iraq is particularly disturbing. And yet, here is an overtly Christian organization in Africa, a region that has repeatedly been torn apart by religious wars, that employs, services and receives financial support from Muslims and in the process, has demonstrated the beauty and power of the Gospel in such a way that it has become compelling to Muslims. This is an incredible story and we have much to learn from it.
As Andy Stanley said at the Orange Conference, when we leverage love, the church grows and advances. What if we just loved? What if we simply served with no strings attached?
What if Christian organizations were the type of organizations that Muslims or, perhaps a better example in American culture, homosexuals wanted to work for them because they were treated so amazingly well? What if, because we loved homosexuals so well that Jesus became compelling? What if Christian organizations behaved so lovingly that Muslims or homosexuals willingly donated their hard earned money to supported their operations?
What if we simply loved people so tangibly and powerfully that they couldn’t help but notice our good deeds and worship Jesus? I think there’s something about that in the Bible…
image credited to Michiel Van Balen via Flickr
