Mine

PASSAGE OF THE DAY:
Acts 10 (click the link)


KEY VERSE:
Peter went up on the roof to pray. He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, "Get up, Peter. Kill and eat."

"Surely not, Lord!" Peter replied. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

The voice spoke to him a second time, "Do not call anything impure that God has made clean." …

He said to them: "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with or visit a Gentile. But God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean." (Acts 10:9-15, 28, NIV)


REFLECTIONS:
This scripture is amazing to me, and I’m sure it was amazing to Peter when he received it. God tells Peter on this day that everything he has known and believed with every fiber of his being up until this point has changed. From an early age, Peter has been taught to be repulsed by certain things. All kinds of four-footed animals, reptiles, birds, and Gentiles. As soon as he could understand, his parents would have told him “no, sweetie, we don’t touch that, it’s yucky.” Or “no, you can’t go to Timmy the Centurion’s son’s house to spend the night. He’s not like us, we have been set apart.” 

You can tell how deeply ingrained these ideas are by how Peter argues with God, seeking to correct His wrong thinking… “Surely not Lord! I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”  But God says something like, “hey, if I have called it clean, it’s clean. I know clean.”

When I first started going out with Street Youth Ministry, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I think I had some notion that most of these kids were lost and that maybe I could snatch some of them from the gates of hell. One day I asked a group of kids if I could pray with anyone about anything before we left for the day. I saw that one girl, I’ll call her Sara, was really struggling and wanted prayer. She came up to me and took both my hands, then began her list of requests. “I am a heroin addict, and I want to be clean. I have a drug charge that is going to send me to jail, and I don’t want to go to jail. I want to reconcile with my parents, but they have not spoken to me in years. I need a job. I need rehab but I can’t afford it.” And the list went on and on. My heart began racing and I had to remind myself that it’s the God of the universe we would be praying to, and he is pretty good at orchestrating difficult things. So we began to pray, going down the list, asking that God be gracious and merciful, asking for miracles. But somewhere during the prayer the Lord began talking back. He said “she’s mine. She’s mine. She’s mine.” So I started repeating, “he says ‘She’s mine. She’s mine, she’s mine. This is my beloved daughter in whom I am well pleased.’” At those words I saw Sara crumble on the inside and she began to weep, hard. The Lord kept speaking words of love that were just for her, and he told her, “You are still my child. Nothing you have done has disqualified you. You’re still my girl.” And so we kept praying and asking the Lord to move heaven and earth for this one that he finds so precious and lovely.

It’s Peter who tells us later, in 1 Peter 4:8, that love covers over a multitude of sins. I believe we are meant to cover each other’s sins with our love (not highlight them, nag about them, or point them out to others), and when we do this, it is like we are throwing a tent over the person we are covering, and it gives the Holy Spirit some room to work in private. I believe the love that started pouring from me in prayer, and from the Lord when he expressed his heart for Sara, did this for her. 

The next week she came literally skipping up to me and gave me a crushing hug. She had had her court appearance, and the judge had given her the favor we had asked for, granting her community service at a food bank. The food bank had told her she had a job there if she wanted as soon as her community service was up. She had contacted her parents and they were willing to meet with her and help her if she would get into rehab. The rehab place near their house had accepted her and with her parent’s help, she could afford it. “I’m not going to lie about the heroin. I am still using. But I am down from .25 grams a day to .01. I am working to be clean.” Later the Lord told me to put my hand on her heart and ask the Holy Spirit to pour in, to be her drug of choice. Amazing God.

But this is someone who was dirty, in a short, tight dress, beautiful but in a fallen kind of way. This is someone I would have passed on the streets, or in the grocery store, and maybe avoided, like something unclean.

I think it is so ironic that we, the Gentiles, the “unclean” of the last age who have been grafted into the vine by God’s pure grace, have now put fences around the vine to make it more difficult for the “unclean” of this age to be saved. When did we stop being grateful for receiving God’s gift to the world, and start thinking we were God’s gift to the world?

We stamp people across the forehead with a four letter word, “LOST” or “HELL,” as in, “where you are destined for, unclean person.” Jesus doesn’t stamp people across the forehead at all, but if he did, it would be delivered as a kiss, and it would read, “MINE.”


POINT OF ACTION:
Who do you think of as unclean? Democrats? Republicans? Foreigners? Muslims? Prostitutes? Homosexuals? The person across the aisle from you in church who wasn’t raised in church? Someone who doesn’t dress like you do? Someone who swears too much? Can we start at least trying to think of unbelievers as those who are being saved? And start thinking of each other as those whose sins I can cover with love? God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean. Yes I’m saying that for myself. But it is also a direct quote from today’s chapter in the Bible. Can we examine some of the ideas that are deeply ingrained in us and see how they measure up to this word from the Lord? It’s okay to have an initial reaction of “Surely not Lord! Why, I never…!” As long as we, like Peter, let the Lord’s words sink into us and change us.


PRAYER:
Father who adopted us with open arms, help us to throw away our forehead stamps and brush up on the forehead kissing. Open our eyes to see people like you see them.


WHO AM I?
I’m Suzanne Zucca. And I like pie.