When we're loved, we can be free.
When you know you are not only accepted, but loved, you are able to be free in who you are.It’s a beautiful thing to experience. And sometimes, when it’s experienced through people who barely know you, it’s even more potent.In Uganda, we were accepted. We were loved. And we were free.We were welcomed with open arms and loved and celebrated.I believe this is the kind of love Jesus offers us.When our group helped out with the Beauty for Ashes conference, some of us were able to speak to around 1,000 single mothers and widows on this very idea. Brandi spoke and told to story of the woman at the well. She was a woman who had probably been through a lot. She came to the well in the heat of the day (most likely because she was not welcomed in the morning when the other women were fetching water). Jesus was waiting for her there (he knew he had a special meeting that day). When he began talking to her, she was astonished. “Why are you, a Jew, talking to me, a Samaritan woman?” He talks to her about ‘living water’ and she doesn’t quite understand. He also gently but knowingly tells her that he knows her. He knows her past and her story, although it was a shaming story to her.He doesn’t condemn, but invites.