When I hear the word nice, I think of pleasant. Proper. Sweet. Good, agreeable. Getting along with everybody.
It's like I see these words painted with neat handwriting in their own neat colors and I just want to take my hands and mess up all the colors and words until it's a multicolored chaos on the paper.
As someone trying to follow Jesus, when I look at His life I realize that neat and proper and "nice" is NOT what He taught. "Nice" was NOT the life He lived.
The life He lived was scandalous. He talked to "different" people that He shouldn't have talked to. He stood up for the guilty and accused woman when she should have been stoned to death. He flipped over tables and called the religious people hypocrites. And then He forgave them when they had Him killed on a cross for speaking the truth. He touched people with disgusting, contagious skin disease and smeared mud on a blind man's eyes to heal them. The life He lived was dirty, messy, wild, and driven by a love that was absolutely crazy and near impossible for people to comprehend. It left people without words, stunned with awe at the grace and fierceness of His teachings and actions.
So I guess this is my prayer...to love like that, to live like the one that I claim to follow. And to know what that even looks like and how it plays out in real life. To live with a fire burning in my heart, and in such a way that people won't be confused through my life at the difference between being "nice" and "good" and truly loving like Jesus taught me to.
