Ramblings of a Youth Worker

I love Grace! I’m not talking about a woman’s name or the thing we say before our meals. Grace. Forgiveness you give to someone who doesn’t deserve it. Grace. It’s the extended hand you give to someone in need. Grace. It’s treating someone like their human regardless of their past mistakes or their current lot in life. Grace. We all want it but at times it can be so hard to give because we’ve been taught to get even, to settle the score, to get our way no matter what the cost. To focus on our tasks and worry only about ourselves.

I don’t know this man in the video, but his story is a beautiful depiction of how life should be and how we, as humans, should see those around us.

I must admit that I had a little bit of pride swell up inside of me when I saw that this took place in my hometown of Columbus, OH. If you haven’t followed the rest of the story this man was offered a job to do voice work for the Cleveland Cavs and they offered to put him and his family up in a free house. That might strike some of you with the attitude, “That’s not solving anything”. Maybe it won’t in the long run, but to extend grace to someone is a beautiful thing!

After following this man’s story the last day or two it’s taken on a deeper meaning for me. For those of you who don’t know me, my father was a huge radio personality in Columbus for many years. He had a “Golden voice” just like this man. My dad has been gone now for over 10 years but when I think about my dad the word that comes to mind is Grace.

"My Pops"

My dad was the most loving, caring and gracious person I ever knew. He just knew how to connect with people regardless of who they were and where they came from. He would extend a hand of friendship to anyone he met…..pizza delivery person, gas station attendant, the single mom, a teacher, a CEO, a person out of rehab…..it didn’t matter. He made them feel human. He made them feel as if they mattered. He extended GRACE. To his wife, his sons, his siblings, his extended family, the neighborhood kids, strangers, to all!

The last couple of days I’ve followed this man’s story I know that if my dad was still around he would have been the first to extend grace to him. He would have offered him a warm meal, hot shower, change of clothes and I bet he would figured out someway to tag team with this guy to be on his radio show.

I miss my dad, but most of all I miss watching him extend grace to all people. I miss seeing people changed by a love that didn’t come from my dad, it overflowed from the love he received through Jesus Christ. It was Christ living in him. It was my dad being Jesus to people who didn’t deserve it most of the time. He did it because God had extended grace to him.

My hope is that my life would not only be filled with grace, but that it would overflow with the love and grace of Jesus Christ. Thank you dad for being a living example of what it means to live life! Thank you for showing me how to treat people. And thank you Jesus for extending Grace to us all, even when we don’t deserve it.

So, today I went to the Apple Store, which is like the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory for Mac peeps! I thought I had seen somewhere, or read somewhere, or possibly dreamed up somewhere a program that would magically take all your duplicate files on your computer and help organize and arrange them.

For those of you that truly know me, know that organizing things and color coding and all the things that make the world go round is something that I have to constantly work on and strive for! It doesn’t come naturally for me. I remember my first ministry position in good ole Bowling Green, OH and I went into it thinking that the only thing you needed to do in Student Ministry was learning how to eat fast food and pizza and drink a coke while hanging out with students.

Fast forward 8 years now and I have come to realize that Student ministry, but Ministry in general (Much like any job) is way much more then what is seen! There is so many things that must go on at a systems level, an organizational level to make any group of individuals work together towards a common goal. It’s HARD WORK! There’s no easy way out as much as we’d like there to be one.

Relationships are like that too! Not all the time, sometimes you meet another soul and it’s like you’ve been together you’re entire life. You speak the same lingo, understand the same jokes, are moved by similar things and it’s just easy. Other times it takes a lot of HARD WORK to make relationships work. It’s messy, it’s emotionally draining, it’s not always fun and sometimes you just want to give up. You wish there was an Easy Button to make things work or clean up spilled bad blood, or make things right. But that’s usually not the case.

It takes….

Hard Work
Sacrifice
Focus
A love for the common good
Desire and Determination

All those seem to not be fun words! But at the end of the day it is so well worth it to look back and say…. “We’ve come a long way”….. “I’m stronger, we’re stronger because of this!”

My hope is that I always strive to turn away from the “Easy Button”. That I don’t shy away from learning things because they seem to difficult, or turn my back on opportunities to grow and be changed just because it’s not comfortable!

There’s lots of things that I need to work on…….Including looking for the “Easy Button”