More Unconditional Love

As I sit here this morning writing this blog post, I am full of excitement and joy. Today is the first day of my last semester of graduate school (for now, at least). I feel I am at a very good stage in my life to finish my Masters, having been out of the hospital for four and a half months.

When it comes to school, I am almost like a kid in a candy store. I love learning. I love to discover new things about the world around me. I love thinking deeply. I love asking questions and probing deeper into things than those around me.

This semester, I am taking four courses, which is a lot for a graduate student but I think I will be able to handle it. I am taking Biomedical Instrumentation, Medical Imaging, Advanced Materials and Multivariate Signal Processing. I also am in a Biomedical Engineering seminar class. This semester, I am taking by far my most challenging courses.

Since I’ve been getting ready for school, I haven’t really had a chance to read unChristian, but I wanted to share a quote that really spoke to me that I read yseterday.

One pastor, Leroy Barber, spoke about his experience living in Atlanta, where he explains that there are churches on every block, yet there is a great divide among the people who go to church and those who live on the streets.

He said, “The church wants them [those who live on the streets] neat and clean but the streets take them as they are.”

That quote really struck me because churches are supposed to be welcoming to everybody, just as Jesus reached out to the ostracized and the marginalized, the outcasts. The church, not the streets, should “take them as they are.” We should love everyone, no matter who they are or where they’re from.

Somebody posted yesterday on Facebook, “This world should have more ___________.” I posted unconditional love. I really believe that if this world is going to change, we need more unconditional love. 

We need to truly and genuinely love those around us. We need to really welcome those who are different than us. We need to be real about our faults as human beings and know that nobody can be perfect. That’s exactly why we need a Savior.