WAS quite piqued, my friend did not understand the logic of my point, in the argument he and I had got into, “It’s so simple!” I said exasperatedly, “I can’t figure why you can’t see it as plainly as I do!” A third friend with us said wisely, “Bob, if we all saw things exactly the same way how boring the world would be? Maybe we all need to accept each other’s differences!”
Wise words indeed! Says Max Lucado, “People are annoying, aren’t they? They say the wrong thing at the wrong time. If only everybody could be like us, act like us, then life would be easy and happy!”
“Unfortunately,” continues Lucado, “God did not create two people the same. Jesus often hung out with those who were considered different. His disciples were not the popular kind. They were fishermen and ex-tax collectors. He spent time with children. He talked with women in public-something Jewish men didn’t do in first century Palestine. Jesus did not attempt to build a tribe of others just like him. He broke through tribal barriers. Jesus accepted and embraced others”
Well, I had the same choice here. To accept another point of view as one, that came from a person with different thoughts of my own, and not rubbish it. I listened and as I listened to his point, I realized how a God above stopped from making clones of human beings. I know for a fact about dogs that one particular breed of dogs, like say the German Shepherd, is almost similar in their characteristics in contrast to a Pomeranian or another breed.
But we humans are as similar to each other as the east is from the west. We can either feel irritated when we see such differences or as the scriptures say, “Be patient, bearing with one another in love” Ephesians 4:2. Patience, that is the key. In understanding another’s point of view it is patience that will help us, a quality I see in many who lead a Godly life. Very often I am amazed at the kindness and understanding of such a man or woman as they hear out someone else, and then patiently explain how something could be done another way.
We walked away, the three of us, and I listened, and found another point of view, which though so dissimilar to mine, still had wisdom in it. I turned and smiled at a God above, who had patiently created us different, and expected us to, as patiently, see and respect those same differences He had allowed into each of us..!
