The way of the Lord ALWAYS leads to unity

"Too often, Christians are all about brotherly love until somebody slips up.  Then it's like they're dead to us.  There's no place for them in our pews or in our prayers.  We abandon them at precisely the time they most need us.  Guess what happens?  Just as Paul suggests, people do become discouraged.  They aren't able to recover." Boom.  I haven't been able to get this out of my head since I read it the other day (in what turns out to be a pretty sketchy book actually.)  I'm realising that as Christian's we create a culture of perfectionism that we impress on our brothers and sisters and in doing so bind ourselves by the very same law.  The result: the scandalous breakdowns of people we thought were 'so godly' and the inability to share our struggles fully for fear of not looking 'together' enough.  I know for me its one thing to admit my struggles to the Lord, but when he then tells me I need to share it with Holly its a WHOLE other level of repentance.

So when I find myself guilty of this fickle 'brotherly love' I realize the need to go back to the classic 1 Corinthians 13 and remember that love "does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful, it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth." I do not want those who's company the Lord has blessed me with to fear I will reject them when they stray and nor do I want to bind myself to an impossible standard of perfection and self-preservation.  I guess I'm just learning the fullness of GRACE and how it must impact the way I live my life.

On a more lighthearted note, I just went to my first baseball game, drove in America for the first time had the joy of coming home to a bestfriend with a tub of Ben and Jerrys and an episode of outnumbered. Lifeisgood.