Tuesday, December 04, 2007

picking up your pencil


Most Christians I know struggle with what I call - pencil picking up Christianity (and I'm definitely lumping myself in with these folks). In fact, I'll go one further, I'll say that most people I know struggle in this area.

Here's what I mean. If you see a news story about someone going to jail or being convicted of a crime in court, often you'll hear an interview of a wife, mom or neighbor who talks about the murderer/thief/criminal and they'll often say something like, "deep down he's a good person" or "he really does have a good heart". And I'm guessing that those people really do believe this. They believe it because the person going to jail was probably decent at loving their mom/wife/neighbor. Maybe they helped them out every once in a while...or protected them in some way.

We all love some people...and aren't as proactive about loving others.

Often the exact same action will elicit entirely different responses depending upon who initiated the action. Huh? Here's what I mean - someone makes a borderline joke about your hair...and if it's the annoying guy that drives you nuts, you'll probably get mad. If it's your best friend/boyfriend/girlfriend/potential boyfriend or girlfriend...you'll probably laugh along with the joke.

We all choose to extend grace sometimes and to do the exact opposite other times.

As Christians we're called to proactively love people.

We all pick up the pencil that someone drops in front of us. We all hold the door open for the person behind us. We all have moments of loving people when the situation jumps right out in front of us...and is fairly doable.

As Christians we're called to proactively look for moments...and to not just wait for a situation to present itself.

We've done ok with feeding the poor. We've done well with building a silly amount of hospitals, orphanages, shelters and nursing homes.

I'm just not sure how long we can point to all the stuff that proactive people in the past have done and claim it as our own...simply because we have the same faith as Mother Teresa, or wear the same cross jewelry as the person building the Habitat house.

We're called to actively wage grace. I'm guessing that doesn't have a picture of me holding the door open for an old lady at Pondersosa next to the description.

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