I was standing in conversation with a friend.

It was a good conversation, thoughtful. As we were talking, I started hearing a conversation behind us. I listened to both.

In the conversation behind us, a high school boy was arguing for a truth with the passion that high school boys argue. Confident, combative, and not necessarily right.

We stopped our conversation and listened to theirs. And then my friend entered the conversation thoughtfully, carefully, caringly, correctively. I let him do it. He was far more effective than I would have been at that particular conversation about that particular subject with that particular age.

I sat and listened and was reminded of what I had taught to a different group that morning.

We decide that someone is spiritual or that they don’t understand something. We want to be just like them. Or we want them to be just like us.  And we spend tremendous energy trying to understand why we don’t measure up or why they don’t.

What is clear to me (at this moment, though I will forget again) is that God did not create each of us to be like anyone else. We are not ever called to become someone else. We are invited to be, with God’s help, the us that he created us to be.

Why?

Because we have to talk to different people. We have to do different projects. We have to go to different places. We have to learn to trust people different than us.

I know. This sounds like platitudes for a Monday morning. Vague ramblings about valuing each other. I could, of course, point to Paul’s metaphor of the church as a body, each part having strengths and weaknesses as compared to the other parts. But I won’t. I’ll just point to ____.