"Think about people you don’t love right now."

A thought by Daniel Fusco, from his book, Crazy Happy (p. 38). The Crown Publishing Group, Kindle Edition.  (Click on the book title to go to Amazon to buy the book.)

Maybe someone came to your mind.

Daniels asks, "Why don’t you love them? Maybe they have hurt you and you think they don’t care about others the way you do. Maybe they don’t live lives that honor God. Maybe you can’t fathom how they could vote the way they did. Or you can’t believe they would watch that movie. Or that they would go to church only once per month. Or they would be attracted to that person. And the list goes on."

He goes on, "When we start to look at the people we struggle to love with poverty of spirit, we realize the problem isn’t them; the problem is us. My problem is me. Your problem is you. The issue is in the posture of our hearts, because when we forget where we’ve come from, we lose the ability to meet people where they are.

"Humility teaches us we’re all the same, just with different life details. We might have unique issues, but the propensity to live in a way that destroys our own lives is in all of us. And if it weren’t for God’s grace, we’d be sitting in the exact same seat as that person whose life is in shambles. Humility frees us to walk in the crazy happy way of love."

He later says, "If you look at the life of Jesus, he doesn’t walk around correcting people who aren’t following him until they make the choice to follow him. He does correct those who claim to follow God (for instance, the disciples and the Pharisees). You’ll remember how Jesus invites us to lovingly correct our brothers and sisters: 'If you see a speck in your brother’s eye, first you have to pull the plank out of your own eye. Then go deal with your brother’s speck.' (Matthew 7:25) Jesus is stating the obvious: a speck is a piece of sawdust, and a plank is a two-by-four. Rather than being like, 'Bro, you got sawdust in your eye, take the plank out of your eye first. Cause if you don’t pull the plank out, you’ll knock your brother out with your issues.'

Wood chips

He continues, "But here’s the cool thing. When you know you have garbage, too, and you’re willing to deal with it, then you can go and say, 'Listen, I’m nobody. I got me a whole lumberyard going on in my eye. You don’t even know. I got particleboard. I got two-by-fours. I got woodblock. I got some composite material. I’m pulling all kinds of junk out of my eye. But I did notice that this speck’s messing you up a little bit. I’m not your judge. I’m not your jury. I just see this in you, and I care about you and don’t want you to get hurt.'

"Isn’t that totally different from when somebody comes and judges you and says all sorts of stuff about you as if his or her poop smells like roses? If we humble ourselves before God and love others as they are, the goodness of the Lord through our lives can lead them to repentance. God’s kindness shines out from our lives and invades theirs. And God may just transform them as he has transformed you and me. I love the phrase 'Transformed people transform people.'"

He then says, "That’s what I love about the beautiful life Jesus invites us to: it spreads from our hearts to the hearts of others."

And that is what we want, isn't it?

Yes, yes!