move from merely identifying with someone’s pain to standing with them
in it, and from having a bunch of opinions to giving away love and grace
freely. People who are becoming love make doing these things look
effortless.
With the new identity comes a new set of rules. It was a backward
economy Jesus talked about. He said if people wanted to be at the front of
the line, they needed to go to the back. If they wanted to be a good leader,
they would need to be an even better follower. If they wanted to know
Him better, they’d need to stop thinking so much about themselves, and if
they wanted to love Him more, they needed to love each other more.
The last time I saw Adrian, we got some coffee and caught up. I told him
I was going to be out of the country for a couple of months. After a great
conversation, we hugged, said our goodbyes, and he tapped a text
message to each of my kids telling them how much he loved them.
Adrian didn’t tell them about who they used to be; he told each of them
who they were becoming. Every time we do this for one another, we
reaffirm our true identities.
When we draw a circle around the whole world like grace did and say
everybody is in, God’s love gives us bigger identities than we used to
have. With our newer, bigger identities, we can draw even bigger arcs
around people’s lives. We start to see that our time here isn’t meant to be
spent forming opinions about the people we meet. It’s an opportunity to
draw the kind of circles around them that grace has drawn around us,
until everybody is on the inside.
We don’t decide who in line is in and who’s out, and we don’t need to
waste any more time engaging in the kinds of arguments some people get
sucked into. People who are becoming love don’t swing at every pitch.
We start by meeting people just three minutes at a time. Don’t waste a
minute of it arguing with people who are wrong. Quietly delight in the