Easy Love

Sometimes we complicate God's love, while He has made it so easy to accept.

Slurping and sipping our tea, hers thai and mine green, we chatted for awhile. As ordinary as the setting seemed, the moment felt so rich. I was blessed by the simplicity of a conversation with a friend over boba. It was probably the first opportunity that I had had in a while to reflect and evaluate what had been going on in my life.

And then, she had an idea that shook up my sweet moment of comfort and ease.

"I think we should give some girls roses."

Girls? Like who? And where? And how many roses? And what do we say? And, what if...?

I gulped down one boba, as half-chewed as my hesitations. With what little reason was necessary (1. We had time, 2. What girl doesn't like flowers?), we tossed our cups and reservations, gathered our things, and embarked on some of the purest and most purely joyful hours of my life.

It was unforgettable: running around the parking lots and that YMCA and that nail salon, wreaking love on strangers with red roses that we had speedily purchased at a nearby Ralph's. Each had a handwritten note tagged on to the stem reminding the recipient, or perhaps informing her for the first time that she was

"beautiful",

"loved",

"Handmade",

"thought of and sought out by God."

The only thing I can equate the whole experience to, in a feeble, limited attempt, is magic. Something would just take over me, and take over these victims, as I interrupted their mission, thought process, and countenance with an innocent flower. They would be on their merry way to water aerobics, or Vons, or to their midnight shift, or on their way to just hating their day a little more when BAM!... My friend and I would strike them helpless with our effortless act of kindness. And then, in their flurry of both confusion and compulsion in receiving the flower into their hands, we would tell them: "Jesus loves you."

We made wonderful intrusions on women working, strolling, waiting, reading, studying, arriving, leaving, smiling, frowning. Young, old, bored, occupied, stressed, content. And I've never been so blessed to intrude on someone. As we just hit and ran, many would just sit there smile-stunned and soaking in those three words of truth, their eyes following us as they decided if that was a coincidence or not.

Then there was the woman who was making her way to the exit of the YMCA. She looked elderly, but she walked with intention and purpose that made you doubt what you saw. I approached her in all her focus and handed her the rose. She stopped, chuckled, and taking hold of the gift asked me with endearing eyes, "What for?" "Just because Jesus loves you," I replied. I will always remember her giving the gift back to me, retracting her smile and resuming her purpose, ignoring my pleas that she still keep it.

And the woman that was walking into the building complex as we were leaving. She was wearing a clean uniform and the sun was setting behind her, as she marched into a night of working and earning her way. We reached out to her with the rose and she paused in her path to accept it with a few grateful words. As she held it happily against her chest, she asked "How much?"

And the last one who seemed too tired to lift herself from the curb and too careless to choose to. She leaned against the brick wall, curled up in a secret and almost, but unsuccessfully invisible. My friend and I rushed over to her, with one final rose, gave it to her enveloped in a "Jesus loves you" and walked away. After some distance, I noticed something unpleasant in the air. "Is that... pot?" We turned back to see the girl looking up at us from a haze of smoke, at a loss in trying to reconcile herself with the gift and truth that lay in one hand, while holding her joint in another.

Sometimes we complicate God's love.

The next day, driving to work, I set out on another little mission. I had bought an extra burger and was on the lookout for a new victim of a new kind- perhaps I was still coming down from yesterday's dreamy state. I was getting closer and closer to my work and was urgently looking for somebody, anybody on the road who I could have God buy lunch for. My building was already in sight when I rounded the corner to find the familiar fruit and florist stands off the side of the road. I walked right up to the florist stand, equipped with In N' Out and thrill.

She sat there alone under her billowing tent, accompanied only by her gardenias, tulips, carnations, chrysanthemums, lilies...

"Comiste almuerzo?"
"No."
"Pues, yo tengo una hamberguesa para ti. Porque Dios te ama."

She blessed me in receiving the food with the most precious of smiles. It was a gift to me just to give it.

I turned to get back in my car to get to work with what few minutes I had left, when she interrupted my exiting and called for me. That moment will stay with me forever: turning around to her to find a perfect, red rose, its petals pursed towards me in a kiss and a whisper that said, "I love you, too".

We complicate God's love. Some of us try to pay for it. Some of us refuse it. Some reason out why it's just "not for me". And sometimes I forget to keep some for myself. But to reject God's love is to reject something as irrevocable and as irrefutable, as inescapable as gravity. It's to deny something as simple, organic, and real as the stem, leaves and petals resting in your hands.

God loves you. It's inarguable. To deny this truth does not eliminate the reality of it, but is to dramatically determine how you experience it. Will you receive it?