I love my mom. Then again, you all love my mom. If you’ve met her you love her. She is altogether different from me . 🙂 . . and the world loves her for it.
But there I did it again: Finding differences.
Here’s what I love about my mom: I have never met another human who to that extent always finds commonalities, always finds good, always finds thrilling threads of God in the small things of daily life. It’s a childlike faith. Interestingly, the woman I think of as being the legend of childlike faith was the very mom of my mom–my beloved Grandmother, Francis Zoet. I still remember her bright eyes and infectious laugh. Her faith shone like a beacon, to her last breath on March 17th, 1992. But her daughter, my mom, carries on that same legacy.
Here’s how I see this played out. Apparently, I have the blessing/curse of critical thinking. They teach us that in school, right? It’s a good thing. It is, by broad definition, “A persistent effort to examine any belief or supposed form of knowledge in the light of the evidence that supports it and the further conclusions to which it tends.” Now, don’t get me wrong, my mom is a smarty-pants and certainly has critical thinking down pat. But, she has this amazing ability to always see commonalities. So while I’m picking things apart she’s busy praising God for how two things go hand in hand. Maybe it’s just optimism, joy, maturity, the fruit of the Spirit. Likely all of these. I just find that my natural tendency is to look at two things and find differences. She looks at the same picture and finds commonalities.
Of course there is a time and place for both. But could it be that perhaps we all need just a little glimpse of all that we have in common?
One of the exciting things about what God is doing in our lives through The Hole in our Gospel (speaking of, we have an exciting post coming up!!), is that everywhere I look I see amazing ministries doing God’s work both here and abroad, reaching the poor, the widow, the orphan, the sick, the naked, the downcast. I see amazing ministries growing like stinkin’ wildfire and I get so excited I can hardly stand it. And yes, we may have teeny tiny doctrinal issues (we’re not talking deity of Christ–no one’s messin’ with my essentials of the faith!), but they love and serve the same God that I do. And they are doing AWESOME stuff. And there are churches everywhere preaching awesome messages, and it’s so easy for me to cross my arms and point out where we’re all different (or at least in my heart), instead of cheering on every tiny step in the right direction.
Critical thinking has its place, but sometimes it needs to put in its place. Lord, cure me of my critiquing. No, we don’t need to join hands and sing Kumbaya, but I’m just encouraged out my mind because God is at work in our world and its taking many different forms. Can I get an amen?! Now let’s go do something great together.
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* No one gave me feedback on understanding each other … waiting for you; please help!