Love Over Logic

I met our pastoral minister for Starbucks (Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte/skinny!) and planning earlier this week. These meetings always end up being mini "retreats" as we share our faith and I am left both challenged, humbled, and inspired. I forget exactly what we were talking about but he introduced me to a few "this/that" concepts, one being "Love over Logic"..."There's always the logical thing to do...but love must prevail over the logical". Yup.

Later on that day I stopped by the shelter for something. One of my co-workers was in a quandary about a decision the team was trying to make about a kid. The kid hadn't done anything wrong really...but apparently he was pretty scary, other professionals had labeled him dangerous, and staff was expressing concerns about safety and what "might" happen. So...ask him to leave for the safety of everyone? Or let him stay and hope for the best?

I felt for my co-worker. I've been in those tough positions where you want the staff and other residents to feel comfortable...after all, one of our operating principles is "sanctuary". "But, "I reasoned, "he hasn't done anything. How fair is that?" "But I don't want to wait until he does", came the response. Ahhh...the "We told you so!" that would come from staff (been there, have dealt with that=no fun!) My co-worker is just as aligned as I am with the understanding that we work with kids who might be dangerous, scary, addicted, insane, etc. We get paid to deal with this stuff. But I also understood the angst of wanting to avoid a major incident. Urgh!?

So I introduced her to "Love over logic"...which essentially is the same as "Head vs. heart" (see a previous post from last year) But...we both thought, what if the loving thing was to keep everyone safe?  Why did that have to be the logical thing? As we went around and around I got a very definite "push" and so I said to her, "Why don't we pray about it?" She immediately agreed so we stopped right there and prayed--for wisdom, for the Lord to show the team what HE wanted done, for open hearts and understanding spirits...and we prayed for the young man...that he would be calm and not cause harm to anyone.

I left after that...and, I believe, they decided to let the kid stay. I was retelling this whole story yesterday to our pastoral minister and he, in his wisdom, added one more step: "Now you just have to tell the kid you were praying for him". Ahh, yes!