crazy love

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to listen to the audiobook version of Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. Being an avid lover of annotating anything remotely inspirational and aha-like, I had a hard time bringing it all together. It definitely means I'll be reading it in paper one of these days. But I did learn a lot. It really brought out  the notion of what Christians are called to, selfless love. I've heard this before, but so often it's tied too much to theology or a collection of rules. This was simpler, but much more difficult.

Jesus' two commands are to love God with and to love others as you would yourself. Chan combined those to say that we should love others as much as we would love God. This is just as Jesus mentioned to his followers about treating the least of these. The book mentioned how difficult it is to actually live this way. He and his wife downsized their home so they could give more away. He spoke of a man who lives in his car so that he can make food for surfers on the beach in Newport, CA. He spoke of many elements of living a Crazy Love lifestyle, so many stories, stuff that seems so different to comfortable suburban Christians and even to a soon-to-be 25 year-old dean living amidst the wheat fields of eastern Washington.

All this brought me to my knees. Where do I need to be next year? I've been making plans and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I continually have to ask, "God, where next? Please guide my life" and to seek out as many opportunities to serve. I'm thankful I live in a dorm. There's so much I can do to give back. Now for the outpouring of God's crazy love...