objects of His desire...

Can you hear it? 
shhh. listen. 
can you hear it? 
God’s voice, the still small voice that whispers all around us. Its not always an audible sound, its a peace, a joy that passes all verbalization. saying, “i love you just as you are. please let me in, let me show you who i am. let me show you who you can be.” 

I am an absolute fool. I prayed this summer that God would allow me to see people the way he sees them. I was unprepared for what came next. I began to see beautiful glimpses, snap shots of who the people around me could be. I began to see the potential in people above their present faults and mistakes. 

I also allowed myself to pine and run after someone. I let myself fall for those rare and beautiful glimpses of potential in this man. But I missed it. Even after being shown the indescribable potential in him, I failed to do what God does the best. I failed to really love them for who they are now, not who they will become. 

That’s what God does. He loves us. Oh how he loves us. Beyond our failures, our mistakes, our pain, our selfish desires, He loves us. He knows what we could become if we only grew up a little bit, let this or that go. He loves us. He even likes us despite how dirty and messed up we are. We are his creation, the very objects of his desire.

1 Timothy 2:3-4  http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20Timothy%202:3-4&version=NASB

Monday afternoon, just before choir, I sat in the conference room on the quiet floor of the library. I could feel God beckoning me to the window. It was rather odd, since from where I was sitting at the table, it didn’t look like anything was out there. I sat on the ledge, ignoring the “do not touch” labels in between the electric candles and gazed out at the empty plaza. Well, at least I thought it was empty.

There in the center, walking towards the clock tower was a person. Then i felt an impression run through my heart. “There’s one,” and I was like, “one what?’ Then another person entered the plaza and passed through, “There’s one, too” and again I was confused. After a couple of more people passed through I heard, “Objects of my desire,” then it hit me like a ton of bricks. God was reminding me that we are all objects of his desire, even those that do not confess him as Lord. This has changed the way I look at the people around me. It is my deepest desire to show them that they are loved by God and that they are objects of his desire, just as they are. 

A good friend reminded me that Christmas has an alarming high rate of suicide. Somehow I had managed to forget that life doesn’t stop at Christmas. I am blessed with an amazing family, so Christmas, in-spite of hospital stays, has been a time of love and joy. Just because its Christmas doesn’t mean that all the hurt and pain and despair just vanishes. People are still hungry, still cold, still hopeless. 

Find a quiet place and listen to God speak. Allow him to reveal to you what his plan is, how he is going about retrieving the objects of his desire in your life.