Loving the Diversity

I'm sitting on the front porch watching the kids ride the scooters without sweating themselves into a heat stroke. The whether here is wonderful and this is often when I do my best contemplating. So I haven't been able to get my latest faux pas from last night out of my head. If some of you haven't heard, my communication skills sometimes find me lacking follow-thru. This was brought to light in my last post and again last night around 10:30 with my lovely wife concerning my work schedule today.

So needless to say it was on the forefront of my cerebral cortex today. One of the things that I was reminded of was that we all have our areas of deficiency. Some of us have more deficiencies than others, but none of us are perfect. This is one of the difficulties that we have to work through in this adventure that I call "community." We often run from this "community" because we like to try to hide our deficiencies, our non-perfections.

For me this is exactly one of the things that draws me into community. Where I am weak others are strong. What's this crazy thing that we have stumbled upon? Well I do believe that this is called "balance." Our diversity is what makes us stronger. Filling in the gaps for each other is what makes us a community. I often say I can't imagine how people without a community survive.

For instance, another one of my non-perfections is that I sometimes get a little, shall we say "un-focused." I was reminded of this yesterday when I accidentally hopped out of my car and left the keys in the ignition with the car running! All because I was talking to a friend on the cell phone. (No, genius I am not.) Luckily I had a community to start calling to help me during my time of "less than perfection." No one had AAA, but one friend was in the area and stopped by the auto parts store and borrowed a slim-jim, with which we were able to free my imprisoned keys. Had I not had a community to contact I would have been at the mercy of strangers.

So next time you get frustrated by someones deficiencies, remember you too will soon be in need of a little grace for your imperfections. So why not extend to them the grace that you will soon need extended to you. Celebrate our diversity in community rather letting our imperfections drive us from each another! And thanks to everyone in my community that constantly helps to fill in my gaps!