Have you ever felt that sometimes we are so quick to point out the flaws or imperfections of others? However, I'm learning that when I do that, I'm deceiving myself. It's almost like an automatic buffer to the many issues in my own life. It's a free pass. I don't have to focus on examining my own inadequacies, my shortcomings, my sins. It's an open invitation to examine my perception of someone else's. You've got issues? Yea, I know it. Everyone around you does, but do you know what? So do I. So do they.
And then walks in grace. Grace that led a father to welcome his wayward, prodigal son home with arms open wide. No matter what sins he had committed, there was a place for him at the family table. Grace that led a Savior to stretch out His arms on a cross; hands that were held open to us by nails.
How I want to constantly live in that freedom. Grace that says its not about anything other than my relationship with my precious Jesus and His people. I think the point is not the issues that we all carry, but loving each other despite them. I want to always strive to become more like Jesus. However, He's gonna love me the same despite how far short I fall.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
1 John 4: 7-12
