Am I still inspired?

This month, I will be celebrating my 58th birthday. Well, looking back on all the years of my adult life, I have lived a ridiculous life. To begin with, the well accepted custom of lying about one's age is something for which I have laughed at people for many years, and promised myself that no matter how old I got, I would bear witness against deception, and boldly tell the truth. But although there are things about me that have never changed, there are, sadly, things that were just not able to stay the same. Unfortunately, we all, as we get older, come to see certain things about people and life that are not pretty to see.

One thing that has changed a lot is the nature of my love for people. I accepted the Lord Jesus Christ all the way back in the summer of 1979. Once I took it in that those who understood who Jesus Christ was were going to Heaven, and those who did not know the importance of faith in Him were not, I became intensely burdened for all human beings all over the world. Everyone I met, everyone I even had a casual conversation with in a restaurant or on the bus, I could only think of how awful it would be if they ended up in Hell! From morning till night, I prayed for everyone in the whole world to be saved.

Well, at 57 years old... almost 58, do you think I still love people as much as I did? I'll give you a hint: NO. Particularly since I became disabled, and have seen the hypocrisy of the way people treat others, how much they kiss up to those who they see as important and how miserably abusive they can be to those who they think don't matter, I am not at all so concerned about whether they go to Heaven or not. And yet I know God's word has not changed. What is known as "the great commission", to go into all the world preaching the Gospel to every creature, has not moved anywhere. So I know that always, though Jesus Christ was fully aware of how much people kiss up to those who they see as important and how miserably abusive they can be to those who they think don't matter, He still has loved them with an everlasting love, and asked us to do the same.

And so, as the Jewish New Year was just yesterday, and now we have begun the 10 days prior to Yom Kippur, when we reflect on how we have lived for the last year, and prepare to atone and be cleansed, one thing for me is to "return to my first love", as it says in the Book of the Revelation". I need to get past what I have learned about people after all these years, and regain my enthusiasm and love for them. I want find in my heart once again, that young woman who could not bear the thought of anyone suffering for eternity.

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