Be love.

When you're waiting in the cold January police station entry way at 2:46 in the morning, cross-legged on the cracking upright wooden bench, picking up your friend; officers don't smile back as they buzz and click the cold doors open. 
"I'm just the friend! I didn't do anything wrong." I defend myself to them in an internal conversation. 
I'm the car
The ride
The taxi
I'm apprehensive of too-close association as I swoop in to save the day. 
2:50 am
... save the morning I guess.

"But if you do not have love..."
Said a man once of my God
"You are nothing but a clanging symbol"
With my head gently resting against the tall back of the wooden bench, I wonder:
When Jesus, God of Love, sat and ate with drunkards, theifs, and shunned, 
Did he separate himself from them, saving face with hurtful inner dialog 
"My only association with them is to save them"

I think not

It's 3am
In His tired hours
cops don't smile back at him either
But he didn't care because when the door finally buzzed and clicked revealing her
There was only love.
Love that saw tear-smeared makeup and shame filled eyes.

Overtaken by love I forgot the conclusion-making eyes of 3rd shift state troopers
I leapt toward my crumpled friend with my heartiest embrace and squeezed her as 
She whimpered "I'm so embarassed"

I get it.
I am not the car
Not The ride 
The taxi
I get to be the love.

- Susan

Isaiah 59:7-10 (NLT)

Sometimes when I am feeling good and "less sinful" (ha), I forget what it feels like to be captured by darkness. These verses from Isaiah describe that truth so well. So many people are feeling this on the daily. Praying for their hopelessness right now - for there IS hope!

“Their feet run to do evil, and they rush to commit murder. They think only about sinning. Misery and destruction always follow them. They don’t know where to find peace or what it means to be just and good. They have mapped out crooked roads, and no one who follows them knows a moment’s peace. So there is no justice among us, and we know nothing about right living. We look for light but find only darkness. We look for bright skies but walk in gloom. We grope like the blind along a wall, feeling our way like people without eyes. Even at brightest noontime, we stumble as though it were dark. Among the living, we are like the dead.”
Isaiah 59:7-10 NLT