Love Them…Like It Or Not!

In life, you will meet interesting people. It’s one of those inevitable things in life like taxes and being put on hold while talking with customer service.

Just one of the few places you will meet interesting people? In line for a concert. Well, at least that is where I’ve met some of the coolest people so far…

There was one concert in particular where I met two of the coolest people alive:

Mom and I were about two hours early for a show, then again, I am ALWAYS early for concerts no matter if I have tickets or not, and since this was a ‘first come, first serve’ concert, we NEEDED to be there early. Anyway, we were first in line and I had every intention on standing there for the full two hours with no one to talk to but my mom (no offence mom--you know I love ya’). We’d been standing there maybe ten or fifteen minutes when these two people came up to us and asked ‘is this where the line starts?’

To make a long story short, we stood there n line for the next few hours and talked to these two people the whole time. Once the gates opened, we made a run (more like a bold dash) to get front row seats, and once I’d grabbed our seat, I threw down two extra bags on the seats next to ours and told my mom to get the people we’d been chatting with in line, that way they could have good seats too. They were SO thankful they actually went and got us a few treats while we waited for the show to start (we still had another hour to wait--talk about patience!)

During the next hour, we chatted some more. These were, by far, two of the nicest people we’d ever met. Ad their passion to serve God was unavoidable. Once the show was over, we traded hugs and one of them looked at us and simply said ‘see ya in Heaven’. And that was that.

When you meet people like that, no matter where you are, man or woman, young or old, fat or thin…nothing matters, you just can’t help but love them. Not in a weird way, but the way that Christ truly tells us to love others. Some people are just easy to love that way.

Then sometimes, you will meet other types of people in concert lines.

Another case in point:

I was waiting in line for a show, and--yes, again I had a two hour wait. This was a show I had a ticket for, so being in third in line didn’t really bother me to much…*sigh* …who am I kidding…I was ticked! But that didn’t get on me too much, third was better than 300th. Anywho, I stood there in line and was pumped for the show, I couldn’t wait another second! There were two other couples in front of me and as much as I smiled and tried to show the love of Christ---they made me feel like I didn’t mater. They started chatting with the other people in line and totally ignored me and excluded me from their fun pre-concert games and merriment.

I wont lie. It hurt. I had no idea if it was what I was wearing, or if I did something wrong…it was awful.

About half an hour before the gates opened, these people were still making new friends, and they were now not only ignoring me, but the people behind me in line. Now, I’m NOT nosy person by nature, but I fully believe that there are times in life when God will allow us to hear things that weren’t meant for our ears to hear. Not in a smug or arrogant way, not in a proud way or in a way to lead us to gossip, but because He needs to teach us things through others actions. Pure or not.

And in this case…not so much.

The people behind me in line started to make fun of the people in front of me!

I felt like I was the cream filling in the middle of a big old ‘I hate you’ Oreo!

The people in front of me surly weren’t being kind to me, but the people behind me sure didn’t have the right to mock them either. I was just about to go into a concert and have a GREAT time of worship--and here I was in the middle of this.

I felt myself starting to become upset, when God spoke to me in His still small voice, and what He said still rings with me today, I don’t think it will ever leave me: “Sarah, love them anyway.”

There will be people in life that we will find easy to love. And then there will be others in life that we sometimes just wanna run away from. But in the Bible, God says that we need to love EVERYONE. In Romans it says if your enemy is hungry, to feed him. To treat others the way you want to be treated--one better, treat them like Jesus would.

There might be people who have been in your life, for a moment or more, who have treated you poorly. Christian or not. But just because it might be the easy thing to hate them, we CAN’T. Love comes with forgiveness, they are hand in hand. The person who can’t forgive cannot love like Christ. It says in the Word that if we can’t forgive, than God cannot forgive us. So that is why it is all the more important to live and let go of the word and deeds people and things that have hurt us. To live like Christ is to love like Him, and He loves us all the same. And simply put, that is the way it’s supposed to be.

No matter where you meet people, at the grocery store, at work, at school, even at concerts--love them like you know you should, whether they love you first or not, whether they love you back or not. Love them like Jesus.