SOCIETY finds it hard to accept and love those around them who look, think and behave differently from them.
The story of Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, aptly captures this prejudice when he is rejected and isolated for looking different.
His name meaning ‘half-formed’, labeled him a monster and banished him to the confines of the bell tower as he was forbidden to live in a ‘normal’ society.
Sadly his attempt at desiring to be among the ‘normal’ was met with such harsh ridicule, cruelty and torment that it returned him to the bell tower, thereby making his prison, his place of refuge. This is a present reality as many among us suffer a similar fate.
When my son, who is a musician arrived home wearing earrings one day, late last year, it sent me into a state of shock and disbelief. I felt as though I had failed as a mother.
My prayers to God for his restoration became desperate and urgent. And when God did respond to my prayer it was certainly not what I had expected. This is the counsel that I received, ‘If you cannot love him and accept him for who he is – earrings and all – then your spirituality is a joke’.
God was teaching me to see beyond the fanfare happening on the outside, and reminded me that it is not the earrings that defines him, but the treasure that is inside him, that is Christ.
I am learning that he is a child who sincerely loves God and seeks to honour Him, even in the music that God has given him. To think that I could have destroyed all of this, had I stayed on this path of destruction is frightening.
It seems that when those around us don’t fit the template or mould we have designed, we brand them as misfits. In so doing, we write them off. We have lost many of our sons and daughters to this prejudice, because of a lack of godly wisdom to guide us in this place.
The Spirit of the New Covenant is a life-giving one, seeing as Jesus, the Son of God, gave His life for us to have this. Jesus is the expression of the Father’s love for us – a love that is unconditional, unhypocritical and without prejudice. How dare we disqualify those whom the Father’s love has received and qualified because of the finished work of His Son?
There is no fear in love. To those of you who find yourselves being disabled by this spirit, remember the Father loves you. You are accepted in the Beloved, and let nothing agitate your rest in this promise.
‘And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”.’ Matthew 3:17.
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