Let’s talk about the People We Don’t Like. Let’s call them the PWDL for short.
I’m not talking about enemies, i.e. people who have actually done harm to us or to people we love or to projects or work that matters to us. I’m talking about the PWDL. We just don’t like them. They don’t share our faith, or our politics, or our lifestyles, or our commitment to the Broncos. They’ve made decisions we don’t like: sending their kids out of district or consistently mowing their lawn on Saturday at 6 a.m. They innocently annoy us. They just are not our cup of tea.
“Not my cup of tea” is actually my favorite way to describe these folks. It goes light. It casts no judgment. It declares definitively that the “not liking” part of the situation is my responsibility only. The other cup of tea has done nothing wrong.
Instead of PWDL, perhaps I should call these folks about whom I’m writing today the NMCOTs. Or maybe not. Let’s stick to the PWDL.
The first thing worth noting about thy PWDL is that we can’t avoid them. Oh, we can try. The larger the community in which we live, the easier time we may have segregating ourselves. Here in our small town, though, it’s almost impossible. It’s tough to hide from someone when there are only two grocery stores in town and one post office. We work with them. We sit next to them in the bleachers during the JV volleyball game. We (gulp) go to church with them. [Read more…]
Add exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy, prophecy (again), service, and teaching (from Romans); apostleship, evangelism, the pastorate, prophecy (yes, again), and teaching (from Ephesians); and the sometimes uncomfortable gifts some scholars include like celibacy, hospitality, martyrdom, missions, and poverty. 
This fall has been a lovely one in our lower Arkansas Valley of Colorado. Ours is never the glamour autumn of New England, but this year the river bottom turned flaming yellow, the backyard trees orange and lighter brown, and the leaves crunched under my feet on my slow morning jogs in City Park. 