Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Power of A Simple Gesture

I was recently leading a youth group in an outreach we do called Roses to Prostitutes. The outreach consists of us YWAMers taking a group through either the West End or the North End (or both) and handing out roses to the girls working the streets and telling them that God loves them. I was leading my group through the West End and we had been walking for probably close to an hour having seen only one girl (and she took off as soon as she saw us).

So I was getting somewhat discouraged and confused at that point. I went by all the corners where the girls usually hang out and no luck. The youth pastor of the group came up to me and told me a story.

We had just passed a bingo hall as everyone was leaving it and one girl saw our group and the roses and stopped Randy (the youth pastor) and some of the guys in the group. She asked them if they were the group that hands out roses to girls who work the streets, and Randy said that that was what we were doing. She then said that she had been given a rose about a year ago and that is was a huge boost to her self-esteem. She went on to encourage them that what we were doing has a huge impact on the working girls, that she had eventuall quit hooking because of it, and that (at the time she told us) she had been sober for 111 days.

What do we get out of this? Love is an amazingly powerful thing and it can be channeled through the simplest of gestures. This story really illustrates why I believe so strongly that a life of love is the highest, and most important, of Christian ideals.

I'm exhausted at this point, but I'm pretty sure that I will blog more on this topic in the future.