"Ever been angry? So angry with someone that you couldn’t see two feet in front of you? Ever been so mad you hit the wall, although it would have made you very much happier indeed to hit the person with whom you were angry? Or have you ever met a person you absolutely, without a doubt in anyone’s mind, don’t care for very much, try as you might? Try as you both might to like one another? Someone who you cannot be around for very long without the urge to say, “Take a long walk on a short pier!”, someone who grates on your last nerve?

Maybe it’s a friend of a friend, maybe it’s someone in your neighborhood, maybe it’s an employer who has treated you and others unfairly, maybe it’s an employee who is difficult to deal with, maybe it’s a colleague that back bites you, maybe it’s someone even closer to you, such as in your family, that no matter what you try to tell them still get themselves deeper and deeper in trouble, because they don’t care that what they do today will affect their future.

More heartbreaking, maybe this is your sister or brother in Christ that has decided that the Church isn’t correct, that they need to join another group that professes to speak the truth but doesn’t really by their actions. Or else they have become legalistic in their “religion”. Or else you just don’t see eye to eye with them. You really want to be a good brother/sister to this person or these people and you truly love them, because if you didn’t, you truly couldn’t say you loved God. (I John 2:11) So you try, honestly try, to find out what there is to love about this person or these people and you make a mental list and realize that what you don’t like about this person or these people is in a much larger list that that list with things to like. And you feel guilty because you are supposed to like this person…wait a minute…supposed to? Guilty? Where does the cross fit into this picture? Didn’t Christ wipe away my sins by dying for me and thereby doing away with the guilt? Didn’t he say we are free to be who we are? "

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