After the first conference a young lady approached me with Oscar, my translator, and she had a question for me as well as a prayer request. Her prayer request was that her father was a pastor for eight years and he quit and walked away from God. I could tell in your heart she was hurt and broken. Her question was that she felt very shy but had a heart to share her faith and she didn’t what to do. I encouraged her that it is okay that she is shy but I shared with her that when we receive that baptism of the Holy Spirit we receive power to be witnesses and I encouraged her to seek God for everything that He has for her. I spoke life into her and told her that she is perfect in every way, that her life has purpose and that God has a destiny for her. I told her that she was wonderful and amazing. I told her that when she shares her faith with people and they reject her they are not really rejecting her; they are rejecting God. She seemed to be very encouraged and lifted up by those words.
Let me step you back to the moment of her approach, as she neared me with Oscar they seemed to be pretty close and as I stood it was very awkward so the only way to make it not awkward was to turn the stand into a standing hug. When I went to hug her she hugged me face to face and then I heard her kiss me. At first I was very nervous and couldn’t understand why she did that. Then I realized that I had been seeing that from different people throughout the previous day. As the rest of the week every woman or girl hugged me as well as any person with a kiss.
Now the funny thing is I hate touching people’s hands, sure call me weird. To me it is gross and I wish we in America did not do the hand shake. Many times I will hit fists instead of shake hands. You know what also bugs me is holding hands to pray, call me unholy or what but I do not like it. Think about it for a second, the longer the prayer the hotter and more sweaty it gets, gross. To me the kiss is a little weird but in a strange sense beautiful. I remember our last night our bus on the way to the airport had to drive through the drive-thru and we sat there looking inside as three girls were finishing there meals and one had to leave and then she kissed her friends on the cheeks then left. Over and over I saw this happening and it brings the idea of trust and love as well as a personal relationship. I think it is a personal way of greeting inspiring love that a hand shake can’t do…. wait, wait, I guess we do have that, we have the clasp of the hands, snap the fingers, hit three times, hit the fists up then down, spin around, high five, then hug. We also have the gangster hands clasp, fist to fist, hug the side shoulder.
I must say that the love of the innocent kiss is beautiful and makes our hand shake quite pathetic. Here is my solution, I don’t think that we can ever change the culture of America to the kiss, at least not easily. However how can you show love more? How can you express the love that God has given you to the people in your world? God has given each of us our own circle of influence and our own world if you will. Are you able to affect your world in a positive way? I hear many times from people that would say, “I can’t change my world”. The truth is maybe you can’t, maybe that is too big of a task, but I believe in you. I believe that you can change your circle, your own ‘world’, your area of influence. So how will tomorrow be different than today? Will you begin to affect the destiny of others by loving more? Let’s see it.
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