This week I am letting THEM make me crazy or is it crazier?

Donald Miller author of Blue Like Jazz spoke at a conference I attended of a process he and a group of people experienced while learning to reach to people around them. The group was mostly comprised of college students who used public transportation in a Pacific Northwest city. They were familiar with its problems so they began to list those problems on a board headed with TRANSPORTATION, dirty, smelly, hard, unfriendly etc. The leader then erased transportation from the heading and wrote PEOPLE. The same descriptions fit both headings.

People; whine, moan, groan, worry, , hoard, complain, grumble, turn away at need, stick their nose where it does not belong, are inconsiderate, selfish, bitter, back stabbing, argumentative, faithless, guilty, rash, harsh, disagreeable, lazy, promise breakers, heart breakers (don’t mess around with me), thieves, robbers, adulterers, liars, cheats, mean petty humans.  This is just the “good” ones. I have not experienced all of these this week but what I have experienced has gotten the best of me. It has frustrated and angered me in a way I have not been in some time. They have been my focus. Therein lies the problem.

Tuesday morning as I was sitting thinking trying to pray going over THOSE “people” and THEIR actions in my mind God grabbed a hold of my thoughts and said “so they are just like you!” Ugh, He was right. I am just like them in too many ways. The worse yet was he said “you don’t love them.” That is the heart of the matter. They act that way because they are sinners. I act that way because I am a sinner. The greater sin (to me not God sin is sin) is my unwillingness to love them anyway. “Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so” and I am a sinner. I follow Jesus…right? Ugh, so my words changed to LORD forgive me a sinner for failing to have compassion for them and actions of love towards them “they don’t know what they are doing.”(Luke 23:34).

Focus is everything. What we look at causes us to respond and react almost instinctively. This week there are ads for the circus coming to Savannah. I was reminded when several years ago I took Geoffrey to the circus. We went early for the pre-show event. Several performers came out and demonstrated up close and personal their skill. That year one act was a balancing act. They balanced spinning plates at the end of wooden poles. To engage us, they distributed peacock feathers and instructed us to balance it in our open hands. People were running into one another and the feathers fell. Then the artist told us the key. The key is to look at the top only and move your hand to keep it in balance. It works every time, try it!

That’s what God instructs us to keep our focus at the top and everything else will take care of itself. Jesus said, “³³ But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided for you. Matthew 6:33 HCSB

I am focused on Jesus once again. It has lightened up my mood. Psalm 73 helped me with that as well.

I told you I was crazy right?

In HIS Service and Yours,

BroG