In June of 2004 I met a young girl named Kylee while being a family leader and teacher at First Chance Camp. At first, Kylee was very quiet but by the mid-day of the first full day of camp, she had attached herself to me, literally.
It was irritating that she called me Baldy (I had shaved my head due to a hair cutting accident), stole my hat, and hung on me constantly. I was very annoyed when she grabbed my hand on the last night of camp and pulled me to the campfire to sit by her. I did not want to sit by her, I wanted to do whatever I could to get away from her.
On the way back to the cabins after the campfire, God used Kylee, a nine-year-old girl, to remind me what is important. She told me that her dad was killed in an accident in April and that I was now her dad.
This caused my eyes to tear up as my perspective shifted. Now, I understood why she harassed me, or as she put it, terrorized me. While I was focused on my comfort, I had missed the pain in Kylee's life.
Dealing with difficult people is something we all have to face. Some people are so needy that they drain our strength. Others seem to get on our nerves just by existing. Still others tell such outlandish stories that you wonder if you can believe a word that they say.
Everyone has "unlovable" people in their lives.
The reason we believe they are "unlovable" is because we only see one side of them, and we miss the part of their lives that few people know about. Tragedy, abuse, accidents, and family life all have a significant impact on shaping who we are.
I bet there is a reason why the annoying people in your life are annoying.
As we seek to tell people about God's love and serve those in need, we won't always deal with people whose personality is compatible with ours. Sooner or later we will encounter people who make life uncomfortable for us. These people provide us with the ultimate test of love.
It is easy to love the people we enjoy, but it is different to love those who inconvenience our lives.
In Mark 6:31-34, we see that Jesus was being inconvenienced. People came from all over to take from Jesus. They were sick, crippled, and poor, which meant they had nothing to offer. They just wanted Jesus to help them. There were so many people that Jesus didn’t even have time to eat. His desire was to retreat, to go to a solitary place and rest. But people discovered where he was heading and were waiting for him when he arrived. Jesus offered no rebuke or excuse. Instead, he had compassion on these inconvenient people and took time to help them.
Jesus is our example of how we are to act towards those difficult people in our lives. We may be tired, uncomfortable, and inconvenienced, but we still need to do our best to help those who cross our paths. We should have compassion on them, not because they have something to offer us, but because they are people created in God’s image.
On the last day of camp, Kylee's mom came to pick her up. She explained to me how Kylee's father died and apologized if Kylee had been a nuisance. I shook my head and said, "She was no problem." My perspective had changed. I no longer saw Kylee as an annoyance but as a little girl who needed to be loved.
To demonstrate God’s character in this world means we need to show compassion to those inconvenient people in our lives.
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