To Love Well

In a recent post, I mentioned people who were evidence to me of the validity of the Christian life when I was doubting everything. Barbara Bath was one of those people.

She was my Sunday School teacher my last two years of high school. She was also a fellow drama nerd who organized a variety of performance opportunities at my church and always got me involved. I cannot sufficiently express the impact this woman had on my life. For forty years, my aim has been to be Barbara Bath when I grow up. Love just oozed out of every pore of her being.

During some trying times in my early adulthood, one of my big struggles was the image I had of God. I won’t go into all the things that factored into this, but the God I pictured in my head was quite distant, quite cold. Intellectually, I could read my Bible and know that God loved me, but I certainly didn’t feel it in my heart. And I had reached a point where I desperately needed to feel it in my heart to keep moving forward.

Here was my solution: I pictured God as Barbara Bath. When I prayed, I imagined her face listening – her smiling, loving face, not the blank, cold, hard stare God always had in my imagination. I would tell Barbara’s face my struggles and fears and aches . . . and I would listen to God speak his kind words to me through Barbara’s smiling mouth and gentle eyes.

Some of you, I’m sure, just got your dander all upped by that confession. The very idea! Giving a sinful human being the place of God in your life! (And a WOMAN, at that! Perish the thought!)

But you’re not hearing that right. Barbara wasn’t God. I knew that full well.

So, y'all, I’m a Baptist (well . . . I was raised in a Baptist church and I’m currently attending a Baptist church). One of the key beliefs for Baptists is the “Priesthood of the Believer”. We don’t need another person to act as an intermediary between us and God. Jesus already does that for believers (Hebrews 4), and we share in that role through him.

That’s an interesting way to put that: we share in that role through Christ.

I looked up a definition of “priest” the other day (again, I’m a Baptist – we don’t have priests). It was “an ambassador, a chosen vehicle through whom Yahweh God has chosen to serve the people and represent Him, on His behalf.”

And I was looking this up because my pastor has been talking about the idea of our being priests to each other. And this is accurate, yes? God works through us . . . we are his ambassadors . . . we represent him, in a sense, to the world and to each other.

That’s certainly what Barbara Bath did for me. I saw God through her. I recognized God’s love for me through the way she loved me.

The last couple weeks have been rough, y’all. I was interacting with many people with a lot of raw emotions, a lot of confusion, a lot of hurt, a lot of different opinions and perspectives. Jesus was desperately needed in this situation. And yes, he is quite capable of reaching down his divine finger and zapping people’s hearts to change them and their minds to open them and their eyes to see clearly. But most often, he uses his body, the church, for that – he lets us be his priests, his representatives. Particularly when there is great need, as there was in this community, for people to be loved well. I pray I was able to do this.

Because I still want to be Barbara Bath when I grow up. Like her – and like Jesus – I want to love people well.