A few months ago, a small group in Orange County, California donated some money for us to outfit our little slum youth center (which is also Jin’s house). We were excited to buy fans, a sink, a DVD player, etc. The day after Jin and Michelle returned from the store with the new DVD player (we had taken ours to her house and left it there for youth events), Jin spent the night with her brother in another part of the city. The next day, I got a phone call from a worried neighbor, saying that it looked like youth center had been broken into. Jin rushed home to find that both the new and old DVD players and her computer monitor had been stolen.
We soon found out that everyone knew who had done this. One of the kids who has been involved with our ministry from the beginning, a boy who, without attentive guardians of his own, has spent a good portion the last 7 years sleeping at the homes of various house church members… Just a month after his huge (church-hosted) 14th birthday party, he and two of his older friends broke into Jin’s house and stole this stuff.
At first I was shocked… and then so sad. I also felt irritated: I wanted my DVD player back! How foolish. To sell his spiritual health and his whole community who loves him for a DVD player? Because all of his peers (the other youth) knew about this, now he felt he had to make himself scarce and avoid everyone. For what? It reminded me of Esau, who trades his family blessing from God for a single meal!
However, suddenly I thought of myself. How many times have I compromised my own soul for much less than a DVD player? Stretched the truth just so that other people might think I’m cool? Refused to forgive someone straightaway because I wanted to feel like I was right?
All of a sudden the mercy of God struck me: God chooses to be good to the ones he loves. Constantly. Even when we make foolish, foolish choices that take us away from God. His posture towards is still this: goodness and love.
Jin, Michelle, and I discussed this matter and decided not to confront the boy, or talk to his mother, or ask for our stuff back. Instead we would seek out and take every opportunity to reassure him that he is welcome and we love him. We went to his motherss house and told her that we missed him. We have greeted him warmly and tried to engage in conversation when we run into him… he still hasn’t returned to any church activities or any church members’ house, but I can't stop thinking about how good God to us is when it doesn't look like anything... good to me, good to him, good to these other "hopeless cases" I see around me... we have a God who chases after us and, as the psalmist writes:
"Makes us lie down in green pastures, leads us beside quiet waters... Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever." Why is this? "For his names sake."
Once God chooses to have mercy, he chooses to have mercy and he loves forever. If we are some of those lucky ones that have received God's grace, what choice to we have but to see others in this same boat of undeserved unrelenting love?