Community Communique

I'll just be honest. After I spend time with people I sometimes find it harder to love them and easier not to love them. This makes me sound like a misanthrope. I am not. I like to make new friends, keep old friends, provide hospitality in my home in the form of meals or long stays. It would be safe to say I love it.
It is this very exposure that warms and chafes me at the same time. It warms not only my emotions, but that secret part of me where God's fire is growing. It chafes me at the flesh, at the corner of my brain that "decides" things.
Community is not only a grand thing for support, it might be even better for un-support. That is, I may find people who are like me and that is reassuring - but eventually I find that they do things differently, with different expectations and outcomes. This can have a deleterious effect on the order I have created in my mind and in my life, the definition I've built concerning The Way Things Should Be.
The really wonderful thing is that I am free to exercise my willingness to love my neighbor in community. I will fail time and again. But because I belong to Jesus who has the power to forgive and to heal our shattered sinful parts, I can keep trying with all good hope that one day I will fully relinquish my will for his. That will be a great relief to us all.