nobody gets to watch the parade.

Last night I finally got around to finishing Donald Miller's "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years." (Great read, pairs well with coffee, ambition, and Fleet Foxes in the background.) In one of the final chapters, Miller was talking about his friend Bob who started a New Year's Day tradition in San Diego where anyone can be in the parade, but no one is allowed to sit on the curb and watch. Nobody gets to watch the parade.

That sentence really caught my attention. I really feel that that's how God works, and life in general really. Yes, God is really awesome. He heals hearts, works miracles, saves souls, basically he's superman. As followers of Christ, however, too often we prance on our floats in God's parade. The view from our float is great and all, and no effort is really made to bring them into this parade. I mean, we're here and they're there for a reason, right?

False. (Black bear. It's from The Office.)

Given the circumstances of Mr. Bob's parade, one has one of two choices: you can merely walk away and elsewhere from the parade, or inevitably be drawn in. If God is a parade, I am so glad that I inevitably found my place in his parade lineup. I mean, I've never regretted falling in love or standing in awe of my Saviour. I guess my thought here is that if people who say they follow Christ, fly his flag and all, shouldn't we all make a greater effort to bring others into his grace? Why is it so hard for us to live what we speak? (I'm talking to myself now really.) Why is it so hard to really carry our cross and give him and serve him with everything- no strings attached? A lesson that I've been learning lately is that too often Christians spend a great deal of time seeking the gift in his hand, instead of his face, and the core of his heart. I've been completely humbled by God telling me to seek his face instead, cause when I do, I see how great he is and how filthy my face is, and how desperate I am for him to clean it and make it whole again. I see how desperate I am to have a heart like his- a heart that loves the dropouts, the brokenhearted, the poor, the outcast, all of those that our society deems as unaccomplished and deserving of their state.
God still loved me knowing that I would fail him and be so poor spiritually that only He could make me whole again. Shouldn't I love all the same?

Back to Miller's story, in the end, the parade was just as Bob had wanted- no one was on the curbs watching. Everyone had become part of that tradition and family and the end was beautiful, but not easy to reach by any means.

Nobody gets to watch the parade.