As I sit her today in Mozart’s Coffee House, a storm rolling in across the lake, the majority of the day behind me, I find myself listening, again, to the voices inside my head; to the Voice beyond those voices. I see with more and more clarity that my job as a leader of a small community of pilgrim Christians is to remind them and show them that the heart of our beliefs, the heart of what Jesus taught, is simply to love. I think about the arguments and the difficulties that we all face and how easy it is to just write off the people we don’t want to deal with, how quickly we just decide to move past those people that are difficult for us to love, how ultimately selfish our attitudes are. Of course we will have differences and likes and dislikes that are as unique and disparate as we ourselves are. That doesn’t mean I get to pick who I love or who is worth saving, it just means that I am as unique, and your are as unique, as you are supposed to be. I should love those differences and laugh at the foibles and help you stand up straighter, not condemn you or make you feel small. This is where the church as a whole has missed the boat. We try to make everything about proving something and about being right rather than just loving people. There are so many people around us every day who feel used and abused and broken, some of it is even their own fault, but my life as a disciple of Christ is to love them anyway and point the way to a love that is greater than any that I will ever be capable of. They are all around you today, folks who have suffered setbacks, injustices, consequences; call them up, love them, listen to them, support their dreams. This is the call of Christ.

The light here is fading as the thunder becomes the predominant feature of the day. Gray and silver outline dark trees blown in a strong, rending wind, the rain comes soon. In many lives, that’s exactly the way things are, the rain comes on the wings of wind, heralded by the roll of destruction through the sky, are you shelter or are you merely more weather? Love someone.