Say Nothing

I was given the book Love Does by Bob Goff own my 22nd Birthday from one of my dear friends. With having a January birthday and a busy Senior Spring Semester that allowed for no time to read anything other than stuff on Child Development, I placed this book on my shelf not really thinking I'll ever read it anytime soon. In May as I was packing up my apartment, and exams were slowly coming to an end leaving me a day that I had nothing else to do other than pick up this book on my self and begin to read.

As I began reading, this book opened up my eyes into how to have an authentic love for people and how to be humble about serving others. Through out every page I reflected in my mind as to how I could put these words into action. How I wished I could have been the person to have said that thought. How could I, a person who loves to serve people, to lift up people, and who is striving to work with people through the Social Work setting show these people this love I had for them. Through my time reading this book I was doing an internship working with children with special needs and their families. If you know me then you know that this was an experienced that really changed my life. This was also an experience that really allowed me to put these words I was reading in this book into practice.

A few weeks ago I finished this book. As a series of events in my own personal life played out, I was constantly drawn to return to a particular chapter in this book.  This chapter was talking about Jesus and all of his miracles. One of the illustrations that Goff used was to symbolized the Disney movie, The Incredibles to todays Christians. If you know the movie then you can remember that Mr. Incredible asks for a cape on his costume. His costume designer tells him "NO CAPES." The reasons behind him not being allowed to have a cape was because many superheros who had capes had terrible things happen to them. Goff then said that he believed that the point in her saying this is because "we can get a lot more done with capes." This then led to my favorite paragraph in any book I've ever read:

"It seems like every time Jesus did an incredible thing, He would say something similar to the people nearby. He raised a little girl from the dead, and what did He say? "Tell no one." He met a guy with leprosy and healed him, and said, "Tell no one." He healed two guys who were blind, and He gave them one admonition before moving on: "Say nothing to anyone." In a world driven by self promotion and spin, Jesus modeled something different for us. Jesus was saying that instead of telling people about what we're doing all the time, theres a better way. One that doesn't require any capes that can get snagged on something-something like ourselves. Maybe Jesus wants us to be secretly incredible instead."

This paragraph is something I have constantly been reflecting on throughout the last few weeks. As I start Graduate School in not even a week, going into a field that requires me to help others at all times, I must keep this paragraph constantly rolling in my head. In going into a field that wants to work with Children and their families, I will need to be that secretly incredible person that God has called me to be. I pray that through this year I will constantly strive to be humble, to not allow myself and my own agenda to get in the way of doing the work that God is calling me to do. I pray that God will begin to work this into your lives as well. As we work to advance his Kingdom, I pray that instead of bragging or having our own self-promotion that we seek God and like Jesus "say nothing."


Go be those silent Superheros.

xoxo
Mindy