Grace Is Hard Work (Or...I Don't Wanna!)

The hubs and I have been playing volleyball at a local church on Tuesday nights. Obviously, this is not even an amateur league but there are a few good players and we've been (mostly) enjoying ourselves. There is ONE guy though, that makes me more than a little crazy. He plays all over the court, jumping in front of people, stealing balls, and gets really nasty when he's not playing well and/or the team he's on is losing.

He was on my team tonight and we were losing.

He jumped in front of me so many times, I lost count. While I'm not the best player, I'm certainly a solid one. But after awhile, I just stopped trying. I gave up on calling the ball & communicating with my teammates, got out of his way and let him play to his heart's content (and we still lost).

It's kinda the same story in churches today. There's an incident or an aggravating person or maybe a bunch of aggravating people and you just...give up. You either throw a fit or stop communicating, you get out of their way and let them run things, and eventually you leave - frustrated and fed up and convinced that churches suck.

I certainly felt that way after volleyball tonight. I honestly don't want to go back next week. Or, at the very least, I don't ever want him on my team again. But that's not how grace works, is it?

The hardest work is make the choice to stay in community with "those" people. Of course, WE are never "those" people, are we? No, we are good and reasonable and rational - and somewhere there MUST be people just like us, right? *sigh*

So, I'm going to go back next week. And I'm going to do the hard work of loving that guy...even when he steps in front of me, ignores me and steals my ball (and I won't trip him, either).

Grace is hard work. But I truly believe it's worth it.