Last post of the night! Can you tell how far behind I've gotten in actually posting these entries?!

More thoughts from Anne Rice's autobiography...

"The more I study this, the more I listen to people around me talk about their experience with Jesus Christ and with religion, the more I realize as well that what drives people away from Christ is the Christian who does not know how to love. A string of cruel words can destroy another Christian. Over and over again, people write to me to explain why they left the church in bitterness and hurt, because of the mercilessness of Christians who made them feel unwelcome, or even told them to go away. I'm convinced that it takes immense courage to remain in a church where one is surrounded by hostile voices; and yet we must remain in our churches and we must answer hostility with meekness, with gentleness, or simply not at all" (227).

That one hits close to home... talk about God putting before you the words you need to hear at the moment... With all of the struggles that have gone on within our church these past couple of years, these words are incredibly affirming. So, so many times I have been tempted to leave, to separate myself from the situation completely... or to confront those who have been so hurtful, and set things straight. But there has always been a small voice inside telling me to stick it out, quietly and patiently, and trust that God will see it through. And I'm beginning to listen to that voice, and to believe it.

Rice continues by touching on sin. "Sin for me resides in those acts of cruelty both spectacular and small, both deliberate and careless, and always involving the hurt - the real hurt - of another human being. I myself am haunted by destructive things that were said to me when I was a child, and over the course of my adult life. I can think of something said to me when I was ten years old and feel exquisite pain remembering how humiliated or hurt I felt. What that means to me, however, is not only that I must forgive each and every instance in which such things happened, but that I must admit that my own words and actions may still be hurting people who can remember them from numberless incidents over sixty-six years. All that gossip, all that criticism, all that spitefulness, all that meanness, all that verbal sparring, all that anger - all that failure to love" (233).

I just love that description. A sin means not simply specific infractions, but all of those occasions and instances when we fail to love. It's not just enough to treat someone civilly, or to coexist with those around us who might be more difficult to get along with... God asks more of us.

Love.