This is What Love Does – Part 1

May 20, 2013May 20, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 6 Comments

This is the first in a series about the 2013 Love Does Stuff Conference, hosted by NYT bestselling author, justice seeker and Jesus lover Bob Goff.

Photo Credit: Lisa Long

On my flight home from Seattle yesterday, I imagined what it will be like when Bob Goff meets Jesus Christ in person.

Of course, I hope that doesn’t happen for another 50 years or so, because I need Bob in this world teaching me how to love people like Jesus did. He’s better at it than anyone I know.

Bob is a living, breathing disciple of Christ, a first-century apostle on a stage with balloons, hollering about fireworks and felons and child soldiers in Uganda, exhorting us to expand our territory and L-O-V-E people so extravagantly that the world thinks we’re nuts.

Because that’s what Bob does. That’s what love does.

But when he’s done here and we are all weeping and toasting him, I imagine Bob will run as fast as he can into heaven, right up to the crystal lake and do a cannonball.

As the angels applaud and hold up scorecards, Bob will surface and yell, “How cool was that?” And Jesus will nod to Peter and John and say, “There he is, there’s our Bob.”

My new BFF Lisa Long, Bob and me.

Then I think Jesus will grab Bob’s face and kiss his forehead, exactly like Bob did to many of us over the weekend. I can almost hear Jesus say:

“Thank you, Precious for delivering so many of them to my feet. Thank you for helping them find me, even the ones who have done heinous and horrible things. Thank you for showing them they are not just invited to my table, they are welcome.”

In Tacoma, Washington, at the first ever conference based on Love Does, Bob’s bestselling book, he must have said that 100 times. “You are not just invited here, you are welcome.”

Photo Credit: Lisa Long

You are welcome to speak your dreams out loud.

You are welcome to quit stuff, even your job, if it keeps you from Jesus.

You are welcome to not have all the answers about Christianity.

You are welcome to show up with whatever faith you have and leave the rest to Jesus.

Bob Goff is a revolutionary, reminding us there’s only one four letter Jesus used all the time.

L-O-V-E

In God’s kingdom, love is supreme and without direct, exuberant expression of it, we are just noisy cymbals and clanging gongs. Sadly, the noisy cymbals get a lot more attention than conference speaker Veronica Tutaj does.

Veronica started doing love by handing out programs at church on Sundays eight years ago. Today, she loves on hundreds of pregnant and parenting teenagers in Austin, Texas. She does love with fire in her belly and told all 1,500 of us how to do the same. I think Jesus watched, elbowing Peter and John saying “there’s our Veronica, watch her go.”

Do you want to know how to do love better? Here’s a start.

Pick up Love Does* and let it change your mind about Christian behavior. If it surprises you, then pick up the Gospel of John. Find out what Jesus actually said, not what people say he said. It doesn’t matter what you are currently doing, or who says you are unwelcome. They are wrong.

You are welcome here.

*Proceeds from the sale of Love Does support the school Bob and his friends built for former child soldiers eight years ago. It is now the #1 school in Uganda. For more information visit Restore International.

Thanks Mom and Dad.

April 25, 2013 / Erin Kirk / 8 Comments

A few nights ago, I was soaking in a tub of lavender bubbles, reading a book with glass of wine, when a song came on my favorite 70’s soft rock station: Billy Joel – Just the Way You Are.

Don’t go changing to try and please me, you never have let me down before, mmm hm mm mmmmm.

Seventies soft rock was the soundtrack of my childhood…Gordon Lightfoot. Elton John, Dan Hill and Stevie Nicks.

Anytime I hear their songs, I feel like I’m four again, standing on a bench with my nose up to the birdcage, or at my mom’s heels while she makes lasagne and I melt crayons on a warming tray covered with tin foil. Those songs lodged deep as I rode in the backward backseat of our Oldsmobile station wagon, with AM station KJR on the radio.

Just the Way You Are turned my bathroom into our 24th street house, with the yellow counter tiles and red shag carpet, and for one little moment I felt in my bones just how safe and loved I was as a child, how careful and intentional Jane and Mike Quirk were as they worked their heads off to create something I thought everybody had.

In the 70’s and early 80’s, my dad floated private school educations and bought Christmas trees so large they had to be wired to the living room walls with eyebolts and fishing line. Suddenly I was eight again in the 42nd Street house where strawberry birthday cakes were baked and consumed on a deck with long views of Mt. Rainier and a pile of kids milling around my mom.

That’s what being cherished looks like, and I know now it was no accident. No small thing.

It’s no small thing when your Dad scours every record store in the greater Seattle area looking for Dan Hill’s Greatest Hits because you said you wanted it for Christmas, never imagining a universe where Dan Hill didn’t have a Greatest Hits album.

It’s no small thing when he spends $300 to make a summertime marshmallow roast on a clam-covered beach even more awesome by lighting up the Hood Canal with illegal fireworks.

It’s no small thing when your mom spends eight hours behind the wheel of a yellow Bayliner hauling you and your friends out of cold, glassy water so you can shriek and giggle as you ski on top of it; or when she kicks off your every birthday for decades with a scratchy cassette tape song performed by kid singer named Captain Zoom.

That’s what devotion looks like. That’s a way of saying to your kids, “you have no idea how much you matter.”

Not all kids had or have that, but I did and so did Sam. Here’s some visual evidence that sadly lacks Sam’s mom Betty Jo, who went home to Jesus too early for our taste.

But as one reader pointed out to me this week, even rough childhoods can be redeemed. She’s done some hard work on hers and built a snug, little haven of imagination and delight where her children know they are prized. That’s what God and redemption look like in her world.

Mike and Jane Quirk are celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary this June – a feat that deserves the week in France we’ve got planned, actually it deserves a week on Mars, but the South of France will have to do. None of us is perfect, not them not me, but if life’s like a report card, sometimes the grade that really matters is the one you get for effort.

So for all of you parents out there who scour Pinterest for cupcake recipes and sing little songs to your kids at night, keeping ever alert for the shimmering intangibles you can shower on them just so they know they are important and beloved, this one’s for you.