WHY???

 

At twelve years old I stood five foot seven- and one-half inches and weighed 80 pounds. It was just as grotesque and boney as it sounds. I was the local missionary’s daughter who usually wore dresses every day and had not yet figured out how to brush curly hair. It was mostly a halo of frizz around my head. Though I was not very old I had been helping with VBS and Bible release time classes for years. Each summer youth teams from New Jersey came to my mountains to help run VBS’s for several weeks. We were sent out in teams of one adult and 4 or 5 teens to run as many as three different VBS’s, in differing times and locations in a week.

            Imagine a twelve-year-old, who looked as cool as I did, fitting into a group of sixteen- to eighteen-year-old kids from the city. It is as unimaginable as it sounds. It was a long week for me, ministering to the children that I loved while being a total outsider on my own team. As we worked at one of the local churches there was a young man from the mountains working with us. I had known him for years at this point in my life. He had dark curly hair, wore boots and hats, and had a gorgeous southern accent, all of that was enough to make him desirable to the city girls, but at some point, he mentioned that he owned horses. The girls were all in love. This young man was the coolest person they had ever met. Late in the week after much strategizing with the adult driver, and much work to receive the invite, the girls found time to go ride these horses.

            This is when a moment happened in my life that I have never forgotten. All five of us were enjoying riding my friend’s horses around his corral, when my friend saw his cows coming over the side of the mountain. He did something truly odd at that moment. He put his hand out to me and tossed me on the back of his horse. He then yelled like a cowboy and went after his cows. Now this was the early 90’s, horses and cowboys were cool (maybe even cooler if you were from the city and didn’t see every boy you knew in hats and boots). He tore acrost the field at a ridiculous and unnecessary speed, hitting the creek with a force that drove the water all around us in a spray. At this point you should be thinking of those iconic horses in the snowy water scene from “Man from Snowy River”, because I assure you that was all the other girls saw. We rounded up his cattle from the side of the mountain and brought them down into his pasture (they were already coming; his entire ride was unnecessary).

            When I slid from the back of his horse I was instantly surrounded. Girls who had said less than four sentences to me in a week suddenly wanted my life’s story. The rest of my time with those girls I was more than accepted, I was in. I was no cooler than I had ever been, in fact I was still an eighty pound underaged loser, but just by spending time with me, my friend had made me cool by proxy. He had all the right cards to win the game of “awesome” and had willingly handed cards to me.

            So what does this story have to do with anything? It confuses me because I still do not understand why my friend shared his “cool” with me and it makes me think of Philippians 2:5-8, which says ,“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used for to his advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!” Or consider the verse in Hebrews 11 that says, “God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them”.  

            “GOD, who made heaven and earth and all things in them” (ps. 146:6), he is not ashamed to be seen with us. He left ALL that it meant to be God, and came down here, limited his limitless power and ultimately died, so that we could be with him. I can read all the theology books out there on this subject, I will never understand it. My entire life I have wondered what caused my friend Jason to use his “cool capitol” on me, rather than on himself, but that “why” pales to dust in the “why” of God engaging with humanity. God who holds all the cards, made all the cards, chose to engage with me, chose to make a home for me. The humility of this move on God’s part blows my mind and convinces me that he truly is, set apart, unique, completely different than mankind. All glory be to God who chose, against all comprehension, to spend some of his infinite “cool “on us and allow us a place with him. May we never get over how awesome and unfathomable God is.