Pancakes and Love

Do you ever have one of those experiences that just take you by surprise?

Tonight was one of them.

Jessica (whom I always fondly refer to as Jess) and I were sitting around my apartment. We just finished up a movie and decided to do something.

Earlier in the day I had coffee with Kelly and she mentioned a thing that one of our fellow Encounter buds, Chris Locke, had started up. He and a group meet to eat dinner at 8pm on Fridays, pray, then hit the griddles. That's right I said griddles. He and some other friends from different campus ministries made over 1,000 pancakes one night. With said pancakes they took them around downtown Auburn on Friday night to give to anyone who wanted to share in some of the warm fluffy goodness. The purpose: to show Auburn that we love them.

That's it and that's all.

So, Jess and I decided to check it out. We drove to Toomer's and spotted a small group from the ACSC. There was a mass of people standing around tables with pancakes, syrup, juice and milk. Every 10 minutes or so some people would grab a tray and start to walk around the streets of downtown offering anyone a free pancake.

After milling about Jess grins at me and says "Let's take a tray and walk around". I admit I was slightly hesitant. I'd had quite a few run-ins with drunk people and they always made me uncomfortable. Regardless of my inhibitions, we started to walk around with a buddy we made named Aaron.

The first group we came upon were a bunch of girls dressed to the nines and a guy tagging along. Aaron simply said "Want some pancakes? They're free!" as Jess added "Yeah! They're warm too!" The entire cluster stopped and said "Seriously? SURE! I LOVE pancakes!" They all grabbed some and began to ask "Why are you doing this? For free?" We replied "because we love you." They couldn't get over our reasoning behind standing in the chilly weather passing out free pancakes to drunk college students.

We walked around the sidewalks and we got some pretty interesting responses like: "Where's the syrup?" "Over under the Toomer's tree, we have tables set up." "SERIOUSLY!? That's incredible! What about milk!?" "Yep, and juice" "DUDE! I'm all over that! LET'S GO!" or a guy that kept running back to our tray saying "I LOVE PANCAKES!!!!"

Some called us hippies, others asked what church we were with, and some said they were too full of beer. The thing that stuck out to me most was their surprise. First off they couldn't grasp that it was free. They kept asking "Is it laced with something?" or "Are you going to give me a Bible?" Secondly they couldn't believe our reason of "We just love you. We love people and we want to share pancakes." There wasn't "Oh we're with such and such church" since we were all from different places. That's all we really could say and honestly I thought that's all that I wanted to tell them.

I've never felt that way about college students. I've always been condescending about the people I see wasted on the sidewalk next to Skybar when I walked by with my backpack from studio late at night. Part of that is my pride and lack of compassion but tonight really surprised me.

Jim always said that Auburn was our mission field. Sure I nodded in agreement thinking "Well I should talk to that girl in my class or that guy on the transit" but until tonight I really didn't believe him. I saw a need that Auburn tries to hide every day. A need to be loved without any labels, gimmicks, or insincerity. What they truely ache for is someone to show them what love is.

I sing this song all the time from the 80's "I wanna know what love is, I want you to show me". Granted the writer of that song probably wasn't singing about agape love, but I really do believe that is what humanity wants more than anything else we try to offer.

I saw that in the dirt huts of Senya, in the smiles of orphans in Ghana, in the streets of Atlanta, on the park benches of downtown Memphis, in the DTC on the faces of 7 year olds, and for the first time in the faces of my peers in Auburn.

That's what I want to do with my life. Love people.

Biscuit shared a lesson at Encounter this week and it just rocked me. He focused on what it means to love people like Jesus calls us to do. I sat there in the pew and begged God to open my eyes.

Well, He did. With pancakes and love.