Campfire Girls

I'm going to go ahead and post twice today because they're both written, and who knows when I'll get another chance to use the internet on my own computer? Here you go...

They call them the “Campfire Girls” because in the winter, they build fires on the side of the road to keep them warm while they work. They need extra heat to stay warm because they are roughly the size of pencils, and they are not wearing a whole lot of clothing. The Italian Campfire Girls work the side of the highway while the Nigerian and Filipino ones work smaller roads. Prostitution is illegal here, but every day you will see cars stopped on the side of one of these roads, negotiating.

It breaks my heart every time I see them or even think about them out there for so many reasons, but largely, I think, because I can identify with them. Because when I run after worldly desires, I too become like a prostitute running after other gods, and it just absolutely breaks God’s heart, but He just keeps on pursuing me and bringing me back and loving me, and I wish that those girls on the side of the road knew that kind of love.

I wish they had a Hosea to continually go out and get them and bring them home, to love and provide for them and show them in every way that they don’t need to live like that – not even because it’s dangerous or dirty or immoral, but because it’s degrading, and they are worth so much more.

And then I realize that when I turn away from God, I am degrading my very soul. I’m counting myself unworthy of the best available option and choosing a lesser generic god – one that might put food on the table for a few days but is ultimately starving me to death.

It is here that Satan wants to come in and say, “But you DON’T deserve Him,” and he’s right...EXCEPT that Jesus has made me worthy. He has made me clean and perfect, and to continue to live as though I am worth only a pitiful excuse for a god is to devalue myself, my worth, and the death of Jesus that made me worthy of more. To steal C.S. Lewis’s analogy a bit, it’s settling for making mud pies in the backyard when I could be on a luxurious tropical beach vacation.

There’s a fine line here between being worthy of God and feeling entitled to wealth. It’s an easy step to take over that line, but the instant you do it, you’re right back where you started, whoring yourself out to money and materialism when the good God just wants to love you.

If those other things come, praise Him, and if they don’t, praise Him for that, and if you never get that dream job or marriage or to kiss or be held by anybody ever again, praise Him for all those things, too, because you’re not entitled to them. They are, in fact, just mud pies, and you’re worthy of the Caribbean. You’re worthy of God because He has made you worthy.

I don’t know how else to describe this notion of being loved by God without either comparing it to having some earthly thing or saying that He’ll give you earthly things, so I don’t really know how to convince anyone that being loved by God is better than...stuff. I guess it’s just better because it means you don’t need the stuff.

All the other things that we want apart from God – relationships, experiences, material things, wealth, etc. – are just things we want because we think they will validate us somehow. They’ll make us either more likely to be loved by other people, or they’ll be an indication that we are loved by other people. I mean, that’s really what we’re after, isn’t it?

But with God, we already have love, and it’s infinitely greater and more pure than any love we could possibly get from a human being who has their own agenda and desires and selfish reasons for doing so many of the things they do.

Why is it so hard to want God’s love more than human love? Is it just because He’s not here physically? Because he can’t literally hold us when we cry? Because he doesn’t stroke our hair and tell us we’re beautiful and make us feel all giddy inside?

If marriage is a reflection of God’s relationship with the church, and we are the body of Christ, then when the body comes around us and supports us and hugs us in hard times, He literally is holding us when we cry. And when a godly husband tells his wife she’s beautiful, it’s not just an affirmation of her physical beauty. It’s God Himself affirming her soul.

When you put it that way, it’s hard NOT to want God’s love and the community that comes with it.

This has been sort of a stream-of-consciousness post, so I hope you’ll forgive me if there are any connections or leaps that don’t make total sense, and I hope you’ll jump in and clarify for me or pick up where I trailed off or just add your thoughts.