A Different Perspective - Are We All Unique or Uniquely Alike? (Part Deux)

A Different Perspective - Are We All Unique or Uniquely Alike? (Part Deux)

If you judge people, you have no time to love them. —Mother Teresa

GIRLFRIENDS, as different as the Baptist woman in Texas is from the Jewish lady in New York, as different as the president of a women’s league in the Midwest is from the president of a gay business association in the Northwest, and as unique as the thirty-year-old suburban mom is from the forty-year-old urban single, they, like all women, have the same heart.

We all long to love deeply.

We all need to be loved unconditionally.

We all have been hurt badly.

We all wrestle with how to forgive completely.

How do I know this? I have learned a bit about my “girlfriends” over the past few years as they reply to my e-mails and participate on my blog. It’s so interesting how I often get an identical response from women who are very different from one another; women I’ve never even met. And that response? “How did you know what was in my heart?”

This is real love—not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. (1 John 4:10-12)

Too often we subconsciously play out our prejudices based on things like status, level of education, race, and even lifestyle (e.g., some moms choose to work; others choose to stay home). But here’s the kicker: we are in fact much more alike than any of us think. It is only our limited exposure to people who walk a different road that prevents us from forging not just friendships, but basic human compassion for one another. Just as Steve and I do for our art-perusing houseguests, I think we need to turn on the light and look for those things that speak to us in another human being.