The girl was maybe 18. It was summer, and we were all working at the local family restaurant. Like Friendly’s, but without the commercial packaging, and with bigger scoops of ice cream. I was a practiced hostess/waitress/sometime manager. I was there to earn some money for college. Anyway, the place was dead, no business except for a regular who often came in around 2 pm for a hot dog and some chips. She never left a tip so I never worried about whether she needed a refill on her Coke. Sometimes the staff would dare each other to try to get her to smile, and watch from a booth where we sat snickering and snacking.
But today the owner was around and we were all working hard, scrubbing out the refrigerators, and even under the coffee maker. We were flirting as waitresses and line cooks like to do, when one of the cooks asked, “What is love?” He was probably trying to ask the fountain girl out, but he inadvertently started a real conversation. One we all kept picking at through the evening, even when the real rush arrived and we ran around distributing hot fudge sundaes and grilled cheese. “What is love?”
The thing that stopped me, that I still hear when I remember that night, is the response from the 18 year old. Without a beat, without worrying about what the rest of us thought, she said, “God is love. Love is God.” She tried to explain what that meant through the rest of supper and on into the dessert hours. And I should have been able to help her. But it wasn’t my answer, I wasn’t willing to let God be my love yet. I am now, though it’s still hard to explain what it’s all about until you know it, which requires belief, which requires faith.
What I want now is to be able to teach it to my kids. How do you teach that God is love? The indefinable thing we are all questing for. I say I love my children, but I am selfish and human and not always righteous. What if they don’t want to know God’s love because my love is so lacking?
On Sunday I was asked to help the kids who came to the AM PM (Circle of Hope’s monthly public meeting that caters to children and families) think about Psalm 100.
Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.
Worship the LORD with gladness; come before him with joyful songs.
Know that the LORD is God. It is he who made us, and we are his;
we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name.
For the LORD is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations.
How do you teach these earnest commands from David in such a way that when our little ones grow up they will answer without hesitancy “God is love”? How do I get out of the way enough so that my imperfect love can be replaced by God’s love?
I think I need to keep living the commands myself, and praying that I can get out of the way and let Jesus be Jesus for my kids. I need to shout for joy. I need to show up for worship. I need to know that the Lord is God, that he made me and that I am God’s. I need to enter God’s gates and give thanks. And I need to pray that when my kids do the same God will take care of the rest.
Every day I try to make things harder than they are. I want to be the troubled philosophy/theology major who claims relativism and blurs the lines of Jesus and Buddha, like I did in college. But I’m not. I’m a person who knows that Jesus is Lord and God is love. The hesitancy is gone. The Lord is good.