Sometimes God puts us with people we don’t like
This was posted to the 55hours.org community, a group of folks who have committed to reading the Bible front to back in 2023.
I have friends who I would often spend all day with if I could. I like those friends that much. Some of them are in this group.
I have friends in this group who I have been able to invite and I have just absolutely enjoyed seeing a new dimension of them, since God has never been what we talked about with each other. Doing Bible readings together has never, until now, been a part of our existence alongside each other.
And I have watched a few clashes take place in these channels already as folks with differing ideas about God come along and pit their ideas against each other.
Without a doubt, on my walk with God, I have observed how He puts us with people we do not like. Whether or not we like them is not God’s priority it would seem. He puts us with people who we need. He puts us with people who we need to learn to walk alongside. He puts us with people who will enrich us. He puts us with people for a number of other good reasons that I have observed, and surely for an additionally uncountable number of reasons that I cannot even fathom. And there will be no shortage of people who cross our paths who distract us from the things that are important. If you ask me, that distraction is not the work of God. But very often, the building of a community of believers from rejected building blocks and from mortar that you would not use and from paint that you might call garish can be the work of God, and those communities seem to be so resilient if the members put in the work to ignore the distractions and to focus on the things that matter.
The Bible, over and again, depicts how God puts the imperfect to work. If we are being honest with ourselves, we are probably way more imperfect than some of the things we have seen in the readings so far. And at the same time, we have probably seen some very awful things that we would never imagine entertaining in our lives. Yes, God even seems to be able to get away with using the most garish paint and making it into something that others will one day come upon and call a masterpiece. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, for all of their flaws, are part of God’s masterpiece. You and I get to choose to be part of God’s masterpiece. Or we get to opt out. Though he might just keep knocking on even the hardest heart.
I have to wonder, if, on his deathbed, Pharaoh called out to the God who put all of his magicians to shame, and who took a bunch of obedient slaves, the most unlikely of candidates for such a recruitment project, and turned them into a new nation, led by the stuttering, bumbling, murderer Moses, or if his heart remained hard. God keeps knocking on hearts. Pharaoh was the witness firsthand to quite a testimony. He certainly had a story to tell. How many of us have a story to tell about how God kept knocking on our hearts? I suspect that is quite a number.
If you ask me, the thing that matters most in this group is encouraging others to push forward in their daily reading of the Bible. If we can be that for ourselves and if we can be that for one another, we have done a very good thing. The rest can be good, but when I look at myself at the end of a long day and there is more Bible project work to do, or when I look at a member of the group I see that as a primary aspect of what is happening here. I say to myself “This guy, this gal, has come along and said, I want to read the Bible front to back in 2023, I know that there is something there for me, and I want to do that.”
What an honor to be welcomed into that person’s walk. I get to be part of that. And you get to be part of that.
That person may get under your skin. That person may be your favorite person on earth. Neither are all that important if you ask me. The important part is that you are agreeing to walk alongside each other for a time and to encourage yourselves and each other in that walk.
And when that isn’t enough for me, it is humbling to remind myself: Self, have you ever realized that you are someone about whom some other really wonderful person on earth no doubt says “I cannot stand that guy!” None of us are perfect.
So we do our best and maybe try to bring extra helpings of humbleness and understanding and love with us from time to time. Because I know that sometimes God puts us with people we don’t like. And oftentimes if we accept that as the opportunity that it is, and we put ourselves out there and do the courageous thing with that person we don’t like — bring an extra helping of humbleness, understanding, and live, then if we do that, I have found that we tend to grow, and we certainly tend to grow more than a less courageous version of ourselves can imagine.
Sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you like a person or do not. Sometimes that question can, in fact, be a distraction. Am I telling you to ignore your gut? No. Am I telling you to ignore your feelings? No, at least not entirely. But I am telling you that maybe there is more going on than you realize and that a courageous version of yourself is being given quite the opportunity to grow -- if you'll let it.
If you’ve enjoyed this, and if you like the idea of a challenge in the year ahead, I have a neat one for you and a neat community of people rising to quite a challenge together. Join us at 55hours.org.