Monday, 08 September 2008

• God's Peculiar People

   by miss poppy

  

  From left to right: Billy Sunday, Mary Slessor, C.H. Spurgeon, Susanna Wesley and A.W. Tozer

  Ever since I was born, I have been steeped in Christian tradition.

  Church, Bible studies, Christian books.

  From a very young age, I was aware of the crowds of people, young and old, who kept the faith and then passed on before us. And some of them were different, special somehow.  The Aimee Semple McPhersons, the Kathryn Kuhlmanns, the A.W. Tozers, the C.H. Spurgeons, the David Brainerds, the Mary Slessors, the Susanna Wesleys, the William and Catherine Booths, the Billy Sundays, the Hudson Taylors, the Saint Thereses.

  But I wondered. What made these people different from other people? They're known for very different acts of service. Susanna Wesley was the mother of nineteen children, David Brainerd was a missionary who died at age 29, and A.W. Tozer was a pastor.

  I used to read about them and wonder.

  Were they all just gifted? Sure, but no more than anyone else. Their talents and personalities ran the gamut. Did God like them more than anyone else? That hardly seems likely, since He put them through extreme hardships. Did they just fall into their callings? That hardly seems likely, given how few people accomplish what they accomplished.

  Did they have some special grace? This was the sticking point for me. I thought that these people were somehow more able than the rest of us. There was a fierce glint in their eyes and a rampant passion in their hearts. I thought they were special. Regular people weren't like that.

  The problem was, I wanted to be one of those people. I wanted that purpose, that passion. I wanted to sacrifice myself for something bigger. As a child, I longed for a purpose that mattered, to do something real. Even as a little girl, I understood that the lives these people lived were significant, and I wanted that.

  I was called to missions when I was nine years old (or thereabouts). The call was clear, and I was thrilled.

  But then life happened. I grew up, and the call started to tarnish. I wanted to live for myself. Faith had a lot of baggage associated with it, a lot of pain. I never stopped believing, but I started to resent the call and instead to seek wild passion in the approval of people.

  People like A.W. Tozer and Susanna Wesley made me feel guilty then. In my "grown-up" mind, I thought they were just better people. Maybe we should all be that way, but who were we kidding? Us regular people could never be like that.

  And yet? Something made me want to be that way.

  So I got sick, and then I went to school, and then I got sick again. My passionate plans for earthly success came crashing down into my lap. I went through an identity crisis in which I realized that who I am is not the sum of my accomplishments. I started to see myself as God's daughter, His little girl. I forgot about those peculiar people for a while, as I journeyed through my own healing process.

  But then I started to get weird. The things that used to matter so much didn't matter much any more. I started to want to be with God more than I wanted to do other things. Not because I was virtuous, but because He was so attractive and wonderful. My life was no longer full of religious drudgery. It was full of Him.

  What happened was that I finally realized God loved me, and that made me finally love Him.

  So here I am, back again. I read the writings of those people. I hear about their radical sacrifices and unimaginable suffering. I feel their zeal and am touched by their urgency.

  But now I know what made them different. I know the thing that separated them. It wasn't their gifts of the fact that God liked them more or the fact that they were stronger than anyone else.

  It was their love for God. Simply that. They loved Him so much that no sacrifice was too great and no task was too ridiculous. He was their life. They were far from perfect, but they let His perfection work through them. Their love for God, their absolute passion for Him, for His Person and His ways, set them apart. It was never them doing it; it was Him.

  I will never hear of many of them. They're the lovers who did great things no one ever knew about, tiny things to the world, but gigantic acts of love. They're just as peculiar, maybe more.

  I've always wanted to be one of those people. I remember my longing as a child of nine and my wistful doubts as a teenager, my desires and my feelings that I could never do it.

  Those people don't intimidate me any more. I see them, as if they're standing in two parallel lines, beckoning me to walk between them, holding out their hands, pulling me higher, further, deeper. They smile, and their eyes gleam.

  "Come join us!" they say. "Our path is the path of love."

  Now I know the secret, and you know what? I'm getting a little bit peculiar myself.

  Who do you enjoy reading about? Do you have any "spiritual giants" you admire?

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