God Makes Pearls--July 18, 2023

God Makes Pearls--July 18, 2023

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." [Romans 8:1]

It's one thing when somebody upsets you as a one-time, isolated incident.  Your feelings may be hurt, or you may suffer some injury or loss, but if you are convinced it was a lone lapse in judgment or accident that won't be repeated, it is easier to forgive and move on.  When someone has wronged you but learned their lesson and made amends, you are more likely to believe they won't hurt you again and you are more likely to set aside the past.  

But it's sure a lot harder when the other person's whole personality grates on you, and when it seems like everything they do causes friction.  In those situations, it's not so much a single one-time offense to be forgiven and set aside--it's more like the other person's very being just rubs you the wrong way.  You know the kind of thing I mean, right?  Maybe it's their mannerisms that annoy you, or their attitude that just drives you crazy.  Maybe you're neat and they're messy--or you're laid back and their high-strung.  Maybe you value getting things done fast and right away, and they're perennial procrastinators.  Maybe it's their difference of politics, or their worldview, or their just-plain rudeness, and you find that no matter what they do or say, it always gets on your nerves.  In those situations, it is really hard to "set aside differences," because it doesn't feel like a single past action you can try to move past, but like every day is a new scrape, and you're dying the death of a thousand paper cuts.  In those times, the needful thing isn't "forgiveness," as of an isolated infraction or trespass, but the ability to bear with the personality conflicts, and to seek the other person's good anyway.  And that's just a lot harder than overlooking a one-time error in judgment, because it feels like it's never really in the past.  It's like you need pre-emptive forgiveness for the present-moment agitation they cause.

I'm willing to bet you know what that feels like.  (I'm also willing to bet that each of us causes that kind of agitation in other people, even if we don't realize it--and that by itself is a humbling realization.)  But if you can put yourself in that mindset right now and think of how frustrating it feels to be in constant interaction with someone who grates on your last nerve, then I bet you can appreciate how big a deal it is when someone is able to overlook your rough edges and chooses to love you even with those jagged places causing friction.  It's humbling, but it is also powerfully grace-filled to know that others choose, not merely to forgive individual bad actions of ours, but to bear with the flaws that run deep in our character and cause persistent irritation like a grain of sand to an oyster.  It is beautiful when that happens... like a pearl.

And of course, at the heart of the Christian faith is that God has committed to that kind of love--love that endures not just momentary lapses in judgement or instances of bad behavior, but the patterns of sin that are dyed in the wool within us.

See, that's the thing: God loves us, not because we're sinless, but because God is willing to bear with us as we are, even at our most annoying, most frustrating, and most grating.  (It's hard to admit that we could be any of those things, but come on here, let's be honest with ourselves.) The Christian hope is not that we're perfect peaches; it's that God has committed not to hold our rotten places against us.  To be "in Christ Jesus" isn't to have attained moral perfection, as if we're the elite members of some spiritual VIP club, but rather that God is willing not to condemn us for our failures, mess-ups, or sins.  In fact, God has decided forever and always not to let even our most deeply-ingrained tragic flaws come between us.  

That really is amazing.

And yet, that's exactly what Paul has in mind when he writes to the Romans that "there is therefore now no condemnation" for us because of Christ.  It's not that once you believe hard enough in Jesus, or belong to the church for long enough, or learn enough theology that you stop being a jerk (I know--God is still working on me!). It's that God won't be held back from staying in relationship with even when I'm at my worst. God hasn't just forgiven me for past actions--that time I lied, the hurtful words to a friend, or the occasion when I ran a stop sign, and the like.  It's that God keeps choosing, moment by moment so to speak, not to hold it against me when I am selfish, or cowardly, or hurtful.  God has decided not to let my present-tense ways of being a stinker break off our relationship.  Because that is how love works.  Love endures the agitations of the beloved, rather than waiting until they are all smoothed over.  It doesn't mean God pretends our rough edges aren't there, or that God is indifferent to them--it just means God won't let those determine or limit our relationship.  And if we know what it is like to choose to overlook the ways someone else in our lives can get on our nerves and still to care about them, then maybe we've got a glimpse of what God has committed to doing for us every moment of every day.

Rather than reject us because we are constant irritations, or hold off on loving us until we are perfect first, God chooses to bear with us as we are, friction and flaws and failings and all, because that's how love works.  God chooses to make pearls.

How might that affect the way we see everybody else in our lives, and how we treat them?

Lord God, thank you for your love that bears with us as we are, even at our most frustrating and frictious.