I felt Oswald's "concentration of personal sin" as I read today's "Faith & Values" column by Steve Massey in the Spokesman Review.
"Our comfort-craving selves so often tell us to disengage from difficult relationships. The pull to be free from fractured relationships, either briefly or permanently, is both powerful and primal. It is also a damaging, defiant rejection of God's best. . .
"The notion of pursuing peace is critical. It suggests that harmony is something we ought to crave so much we'll chase it down at great expense to ourselves."
When I am hurt, I withdraw. I smile, but I quickly and carefully begin to disengage, to separate and protect myself with thin, clear layers of durable protection. When I hurt, I desperately want it to stop -- so much so that I am willing to cut myself off from the Body of Christ, thereby hurting the Body and preventing my own healing. Keeping people at a distance seems so much safer, but as Massey writes, it is "also a damaging, defiant rejection of God's best."
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