Skip to main content

The Body


I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day, a retired minister who I hadn't seen in some time. We were talking about how fun it was for him to be retired and be able to visit different churches and decide where to go.

Because when you're the pastor you kind of have to go to the church where you work. It's just a thing that happens.

I told him that I envied him. I love our church where we've been for the past seven years, and I don't see us leaving anytime soon, but there were churches in the past that I didn't like. 

I mentioned this to him and he said, "But we need to love the body, these are the people we will be in heaven with."

I agreed that we do need to love them. And I did love them, but no where in the Bible does it say that we need to like them. 

For a while when we pastored at these other churches I would occasionally have people ask me if I knew of a good church in the area and I sent them elsewhere. I did not send them to the one where we were employed. 

There is a big difference between love and like.

I could love the people and take care of them but there were some that I didn't like. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I love my own body. I do my best to take care of it, but there are parts of it that I don't like. I have bowed legs, I have a bent toe, there is some cellulite (I really don't like that), a scar on my forehead, bump on my nose, and other things that I don't like. Does it make me care for my body any less? No.

Will you like every person you come across? No. 
Will you like every Christian you come across? No.
Personalities are too different. 
Backgrounds are too different.

Sometimes these people hurt you. Sometimes they mistreat you. Sometimes they break your trust. Do you have to like them? Absolutely not, but you do have to love them.

Loving them means praying for them. Caring about them. Not wanting any harm to come to them.

Sometimes the only thing we have in common is Christ and that's okay.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Front Row Seat

  If you've been around me any length of time, you'll know I love having a front row seat when possible. Church. Concerts. Comedy shows. Auctions. I want to be front and center, where the action is, so I don't get distracted and miss something. I want to be part of the event and front is where it's at.  Lately I've had a front row seat to some things that I wish I could unsee. My mother's Alzheimer's diagnosis and the last year and a half of watching her slow and steady decline into a world of unknowns has taken a toll.  I tend to hold every emotion inside. Always have. I've learned -these past fifteen months or so- that this is bad for my health. Stress levels are impacting how I feel. Palpitations, and a diagnosis of "harmless" PACs, have left me trying to manage this stress. It's gotten easier but, I'll admit, I still have things shoved down inside. And then along came CDH. A diagnosis I'd not heard of before it was given to...

Sweet Zoey

 Zoey - August 10, 2020 When we found her I didn't realize I needed her. Sure, she needed us, she was living in woods, alone, surviving on whatever she could find. She was nine months old, the vet later told me when I took her in for a check-up, still unsure I wanted to keep this undernourished mutt. We'd been on vacation in southwest Missouri, near the Arkansas border, in the middle of the woods. I was on the porch when I saw her trotting down the dirt road. A little brown dog. I whistled and she stopped to look at me from across the lawn. Then she continued on her way. Later that night, the family was watching a movie we'd brought (no cable service out there!) and suddenly this furry face popped up in the window, scaring my husband out of his seat. We fed her some people food and went to bed.  She was still there in the morning. We asked around and no one knew where she came from. We fed her some more and she stayed. The next day we went and bought some dog food, f...

Kitchen floor woes

I spent a better part of this afternoon lamenting how much I hate my kitchen floor. It puzzles me as to why anyone would install such flooring. Not only is it ugly, but also impractical. It also puzzles me as to why, after nearly nine years in this house, I still have this floor. Well. It doesn't puzzle me that much ($$$). I clean it only once a year.  Don't judge,  I Swiffer and spot clean in between. And I have a dog who does her share of, ahem , cleaning it.  But see all of those deep grout lines? Scrubbing around each brick tile and into those lines is beastly. It's much harder than getting foundation out of the lines on my face. Douse with cleaner. Scrub with rough sponge. Wipe with cloth rag. Rinse with rag. Rinse again in between each brick tile until it's done. Roughly two hours of scrubbing and rinsing. Similar process to removing makeup, but much more labor intensive.  Yes, I could use a mop but scrubbing...