You are not what you've done

I have a passion for people. I thrive off of my interaction with peope. God has given me the wonderful opportunity to meet a wide variety of people. And every new person I meet changes or challenges my perspectives. I'm learning that people really aren't what they do.

We like to put people in a box and say well because you have done this or that, that's who you are. You've done a terrible horrible thing so that makes you a terrible horrible person. But, that's just not true. Now there are people who do terrible horrible things because they are terrible horrible people. However, there are those people who have done something that we consider terrible and horrible, but that's not who they are.

I have had my perspective on what "those" people are like. Then I meet one of "them" and find that they are really a lot like me. Truthfully, they are a lot like us all. If not for the grace of God, there go I.

If you were a Christian in the early church, you would have probably looked with disdain at they guy holding the coats of the men stoning Steven. He's there standing with a smirk on his face. He persecuted people, killing people. Can you imagine what the Christian church would have been like, if we threw Paul away? What if we just decided to call hold him to what he had done? Many of us are Christians now because of the testimony of this man.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2