By Joel McKerrow

Over the last few years a common occurrence in my life has been the tug of war that occurs between the passionate part of my heart and the comfortable part of my brain. It often manifests when I know I should do something to serve someone and show them love…  at that exact moment my mind kicks into overdrive convincing me that if I did what is on my heart a) I would look stupid, b) the whole world would pause and look and laugh, c) I would face certain rejection and/or d) there would just be no use in it at all.

This paradigm becomes so prevalent that you resign yourself to sitting back and getting on with life and thinking that if some opportunity to love someone slaps me in the face…then I will do it. Otherwise…not so much.

We become like bird-watchers waiting around for that one rare species to fly into view, whilst all the while there are so many normal birds that have been made by the same creator flying around right in front of us.

And God?

Well, if I remember correctly- His eye is on the Sparrow.

So when I received a phone call at 9:30pm the other night from some crazy passionate teenager wanting to clean up our cities mall that was full of rubbish to show the love of God to our community my heart says ‘YES’, but my mind and body say ‘It’s sleep time.’

Maybe, the fact is, we even get so comfortable that a rare bird in the form of ‘a Shannon Noll concert during a council strike filling the mall up with rubbish and no one to clean it up’ slaps us in the face and all we want to do is go to sleep.

The life of Jesus just seems so foreign to us at those moments - how can someone be so self-sacrificing, so willing to be uncomfortable in his love for people, so desiring to worship God in all his actions?

When my heart finally won-over my body and mind and I made my way down to the mall I realised that I no longer want to be a bird-watcher sitting back waiting for the rare opportunities to fly by. I want to live as Jesus did and actively seek out chances to love any person I can in every situation I can. I want to step away from what international missions consultant Thomas Davis laments over in his book, Fields of the Fatherless, when he says, “So many times we (and I’m guiltiest of this) sit on our hands and wait for someone who needs help to come knocking on our door. That’s the opposite of what we should be doing! Think of how many encounters Jesus had with the sick and with people who were possessed by evil. Most of his opportunities to care and heal occurred because He was walking out amongst them.” 

 I want to seek and save the lost in as small an action as cleaning up some rubbish or comforting a hurting soul, or giving money to someone in need. When that connection happens, when we love someone with the love of the Father, that’s when lives will be changed.