Resting in good company?

It's Christmas Day.  The presents have been opened and the feast has been consumed.  Family is scattered around the in-law's home.  One is snoozing in the Lazy Boy in front of the TV, ladies are still chatting around the dinner table over dessert and coffee, kids are amusing themselves with some of the cheaper toys from their stockings.

We don't see all of these family members very often.  As I contemplate this notion, it occurs to me that we don't have each other for very long.  Beyond genes, we share a few common experiences and even fewer common points of view.  Generational differences, political differences, religious / spiritual differences, different preferences of all sorts.  Yet somehow we manage to come together and actively love one another every so often.  It's a choice.

Come to think of it, none of us have each other for very long.  We work, learn, play, run, and worship together for small subsets of our lives and we all have differences which could divide us.  But we often choose to set those differences aside and share the common experience.  Other times we decide to poke, push, annoy, quarrel, and judge.

What's really fascinating to me is the rationale we use for this divisive and fruitless behavior.  Ever know one of those people who thinks that you are somehow accountable to them?  Perhaps they'll justify it with a Bible verse about accountability.  Guess what 'sport'?  If you haven't made deposits into someone's life, they are very unlikely to feel even the remotest sense of responsibility to you and your view.  Take your projection, judgment, opinion, and keep walking.

This season is too short.  We'll be in one another's company for too little time.  As much as we would like others to share our point of view, many just simply won't.  Can we love them anyway?  Can we keep from annoying them to death?  Let's make the best of each circle we're in, make deposits with one another that matter; deposits that come from love and concern for each other, then rest in enjoyments of one another's good company with no expectation.  A new year is upon us and it will be over all too quickly.

Blessings my friends,

Allen