God is Love

     A girl came in yesterday for a pregnancy test.  She was 18 and when she first came in and sat down she exuded joy and warmth of personality.  The kind of girl you would expect to be the life of the party no matter where she was.   I liked her right away.   Esther and I both sat down with her making small talk to get to know her as we filled out her form.  She told us she was in a program studying to become a nurse because she loves helping people.  Esther asked her how things were with her boy friend and if he knew she might be pregnant.   Immediately the tears began to stream down her face.  "Ya, he knows.  He wants me to get rid of it.......That's what I want too."  The tears continued to fall.  After asking how long they had been going out she told us two months but had been sexually active even before they were "an item".  We talked to her about abortion and explained the procedure to her and the development of the unborn baby.   Esther spoke with her of waiting for the right man, of having high standards and respecting herself enough to wait to give herself to a man worthy of her.  That she, an intelligent, beautiful girl IS worth waiting for.  She told us that since she told him she might be pregnant he hasn't been the same.  She couldn't put  it into words but when Esther suggested "you feel used?  Not loved for you but for your body?".  She nodded and cried.  

     If you look around you will see many suffering souls.  You can look in their face and see their pain.  Its visible and real.  Then there are those you will see,  like this sweet girl, and think "they have the world at their fingertips".   Their confidence and joy and beauty demand doors to be opened almost by default.  However, as I sat across from this sweet girl, one minute confident, the next crying,  I was struck by her deep, yet totally masked, pain.  She is not the first girl I have experienced this with.  Yet  each time I am faced with it I can't help but wonder how many people we pass on the street or talk to or may even know and yet are kept oblivious to their suffering.    How I ache for them.  So every day I pray the Fragrance Prayer asking God to shine through me and my failings so that others may see Christ through me.  A "fragrance"  of Christ that surrounds me that isn't so much intentional or forced but rather just is. To be honest it is too exhausting and too large a burden to bare for me, a weak, flawed human being, to continually be aware and "on the lookout" for that someone to encourage with a word or maybe just a smile.  And how can one judge the depth of someone's pain?   So please join me in this prayer so that we, one body in Christ, can convert the nations through the love of Jesus Christ. 

"Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is Love." - 1 John 4-8

"We love because he first loved us." - 1 John 4-19

 
Dear Jesus, help me to spread Your fragrance wherever I go.
Flood my soul with Your spirit and your love.
Penetrate and possess my whole being so utterly, that my life may only be a radiance of Yours.
Shine through me, and be so in me that every soul I come in contact with may feel Your presence in my soul.
Let them look up and see no longer me, but only you my Jesus!
Stay with me and then I shall begin to shine as You shine, so to shine as to be a light to oth