“Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.”
Ephesians 4:2
We all have ‘em.
Warts, I mean.
(Well, if not physical warts, moral ones for sure.)
Not a one of us can stake a reasonably believable claim to perfection in this life. Which is why we all need to learn to overlook warts.
Seriously.
Take my little friend here, for example.
This is a Canadian Toad. He is – well, a little bumpy. But if we wrote him off, discounted him because of his warts, we’d be overlooking his usefulness, his contribution to our local ecological balance.
We must learn to look past those characteristics that we don’t like, or make us uncomfortable, or that we find run us the wrong way, in order to appreciate the good in each other.
At least, that’s what I hope y’all are doing for me.
Here’s the thing.
We understand that beneath our foolish choices or stray words or erratic driving or grumpy faces are good intentions, a desire to do what is right, and a variety of impediments to our always choosing the higher road.
Real love is able to look past the faults to the heart beneath. Real love chooses to shrug off the irritations because the friendship has value, the interchange of ideas and insights and differences of opinions help us to understand ‘other’ – and we so need that in our world!
We really need to learn how to accept each other for where they are, not for where we wish they were.
Warts and all.
Take one step further into accepting the whole, real, flawed folks around you with me?
Father, we are so very glad that You have deliberately chosen to accept and love us, imperfect and flawed as we are. Thank You for the grace You extend daily. Teach us to in turn extend the same grace we crave for ourselves to others. Amen.
Growing in Grace 