a lot to learn

Madeline L'Engle is one of my favorite authors. She is challenging and approachable, easy-to-understand and deep. One thing she taught me was that any and all persons can teach me something. I put myself at a disadvantage by prejudging them based on religion, socioeconomic level, lifestyle, political beliefs, sexual preference, characteristics, or life experience.

The faithful of any religion can teach me because they are still created in God's image. I need to remember I can learn from anyone. Each person has unique gifts and experiences that I don't have. Their perspectives of life can teach me deep and universal truths that break down walls/barriers between us. The focus then switches to what we have in common instead of our differences. Then we really start doing the work of the Kingdom.

Although I am most comfortable with people who are similar to myself, it is not in their company where I grow the most. I need to regularly encounter others who think/act/believe differently than I do - to grown and learn from them. If I surround myself only with people like me, I will be in danger of thinking I'm correct all the time because I don't hear any dissension from my opinions.

In Habitat World Magazine, Sept. 2010, Eboo Patel, founder of Chicago-based Interfaith Youth Core underscores Habitat for Humanity's ability to engage people of many faiths around the positive outcomes of affordable housing for our shared society. "[By partnering together], these interfaith [groups] increase civic participation through service; they build better relations between diverse religious and secular communities; and they address an important social need."

Although it is more challenging, more exhausting, more difficult, I pray for the openness to receive all who cross my path - and to ask God to give me His eyes to see them with.