We do not know enough to judge

12 We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!

13 But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

- 1 Corinthians 13:12-13 The Message

The second principle that I’ve been mulling over is this: I am only responsible for living out my way of seeing. I have no right to judge yours, even if IN THEORY it seems like we should agree.

The person who demanded that I comply with his request or take on the status of “enemy” was a confusing relationship for me, because I was under the impression that we shared a set of core values. And, I believe that we did. But my mistake was thinking that we applied them in the same way too. And we did not.

Compassion to carry on a relationship or end it will be in short supply if we do not get a grip on how unclear we all are so much of the time about just about everything. No wonder we get confused when what we think are shared core values end up being expressed in such different ways. If we can see how we are all prone to walking around in a fog, then maybe we can find some compassion for one another as we continue to bump into things in the dark.