Would you like to pick and choose how you would like love or walk your life? Absolutely

I was reading 1 John 4:18 and this is what resonated with me. 

“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear”. 

For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.

It makes me ponder over “Loving Unconditionally”, See, if we choose to love unconditionally we choose to have no boundaries in our lives.

but without boundaries our lives would be in chaos… 

we are taught, Love the sinner, not the sin…this thought takes me back to a movie I once watched. 

I cant recall the name of it but it was a story about a woman whose husband had been murdered and her passion in life turned from writing Christian children’s books to finding the man who had shot and killed her husband.  She had become bittered and envied with revenge, dead on the inside.

In search of this man, the journey she was on led her to a long time ago friend back from when she was in school. It turned out that he was a warrior for God reaching as many kids from the projects as he could. 

As they became reacquainted in their long ago friendship she’d learned of his path which at one point landed him in prison. 

While there, he had almost committed murder and because of his actions it got him sent him to solitary confinement. It was there while in  solitary that he found Jesus and was never the same.

As the story unfolds she begins to tell of her journey and what happened to her husband.

I have to back up here,

Early in the show she is contemplating taking her life because of all the dead ends but is interrupted by an accident involving two kids who just robbed a store who just so happen to be a part of “poppa joes kids” as he was known by all.

As she tells Poppa Joe her heartache, he told her; sometimes the path we are on may appear as a dead end but really it’s just the beginning to the right path that we were called to be on.

As she continues to tell her story of her husband and how he was a man who shared the love of God with complete strangers.

As part of his identity in God’s kingdom, She said, he always had a $2.00 bill. He believed there was enough love to go around, you just have to share it, and like the $2.00 bill, most people when they get one will hide it, they will hoard them, this is what people do with their love, they hide it or will hoard it for certain people, certain occasions, certain behaviors, and at certain times, when the truth is they pass everyday by a stranger

On the sidewalk, in the grocery store, at a gas station,  at some time or place there’s a stranger in their path but they hoard the kindness, the smile, the hello, the “can I help you”.

So her husband would take the $2.00 bill and give it to a complete stranger with a kind word, sometimes it would open the door that he could share the love of Jesus and this would then offer someone else to pass the story of the $2.00 on to the next person.

Pretty profound analogy, don’t you think?

As the movie nears its end she ultimately comes face to face with the man she has been seeking after and with gun in her hand and him on his knees, he begs her before she shoots him to listen to her. 

He goes on to tell her that yes he was there that night but he didn’t shoot him, he was trying to help him but he knew he was marked “being from the gang”, the projects that he’d have no chance, so he ran. 

As she listened to him something compelled her to lower the gun, she asked him… Did he give you anything? and with the nod of his head he pulled out a $2.00 bill and said “he’s never been the same since”. 

You see, although her husband had boundaries in his life he loved beyond what he saw.  He didn’t run the same circles, he didn’t have the same habits but instead he “loved unconditionally” with boundaries….