Enjoy people

My brothers, as believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ, don't show favoritism. Suppose a man comes into your meeting wearing a gold ring and fine clothes, and a poor man in shabby clothes also comes in. If you show special attention to the man wearing fine clothes and say, "Here's a good seat for you," but say to the poor man, "You stand there" or "Sit on the floor by my feet,"have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?
James 2:1-4

We all avoid people from time to time. Perhaps it’s seeing them in the supermarket but walking on as if you didn’t. Perhaps it’s avoiding that conversation that you know you should have.

We’re afraid. Sure, we’re busy, we’re focussed, we can only have so many friendships, right? It comes down to the ‘F’ word – fear.

People are different, they act differently to they way that we expect. They don’t always respond in the way that we’d like them to. We can’t control what they are likely to think, say or do.

We hope they will understand, give us a break, or just go along with what we say – but you just can’t always predict the way people will behave. It could become awkward, embarrassing, difficult, conflicting – even time consuming. Why would we want to risk all that?

Funny thing about people is that we’re one of them. We are a wonderful mess of personality, ambitions, past hurts, challenges, and moods. There’s plenty to be afraid of. We’re all different – that can be scary.

What if we decided to check some of those automatic responses and challenge that fear?

We can decide to overlook differences, or even better, to enjoy them. We can look to protect ourselves, or we can embrace the wonderful risks of community. We can look at what we perceive as weaknesses in people and judge and reject as we see fit, or we can ask God to challenge our uneasiness and show acceptance and engagement.

We can bring hope instead of fear into hundreds of potential interactions every week. We can decide to believe in people and even enjoy the differences. I look forward to the life and joy that this will bring in my relationships.

What if we decided to take joy in people? Different, risky, scary, wonderful people?

What if we truly realised how much we require this kind of understanding, and what Christ has already done to extend it to us?

[If you have a few minutes, check out this talk by Viktor Frankl on believing in others.]