"Understanding..........................."

”But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin”….1st John 1:7

Beth and I went to the cinema yesterday afternoon, long overdue for such a date and mutually enticed by the television clips of “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. It turned out to be one of those long movies, having you enjoying the story but, after awhile, wondering where they are going with the plot. Centered around the tragedy of 9/11, its tale more concerned itself with how the loss of his father played out in the life of a young boy diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome. Working with Elementary Special-Ed children, the whole scenario spoke to me; but what hit me even more was the idea of each of us being linked by our humanity. Different though our stories may be, yet within us runs a ribbon that connects us if we can but manage to look past the other fellow’s individuality and embrace that lost soul wandering with us through this mystery called life. When will we learn that the sin is not so much in who and what we are, as in our rejection of that One who created us, that One who is able to heal us from the inside out? I look each day at family, friends, people who step into my existence if only momentarily, the guy pumping gas, the woman at the mall, the men at the mission, the kids at the detention center – what is it that really separates us all other than our opinions, our fears, our unwillingness to look in the mirror and see ourselves through His eyes? For four decades, the verse above spoke to me in terms of my somehow walking in perfection, or at least in as much as it is possible for me to see things as He sees them. Could it be, though, that what John actually means is that, in simply holding to His hand as we stumble down the path, giving grace even as we receive grace, the walls between us are torn down through that which He extends to us all?......