Tenderness

I go to "my spot" often with hope and an eagerness (ok, and a tid bit of anxiousness) to read, pray, and listen to God.  I also share the space with my hairy friend:), not that she gives me any option in the manner.  Either share or hear her scratch on the door the whole time!

So I spend time with God because I want to.  I need Him, and I want to know Him, grow close to Him, and just maybe be used by Him.  I want to sometimes be quiet before Him in hopes of hearing from Him.

May I share something I read recently from a book I am highly enjoying called, Abba's Child by B.Manning?  I want to experience the tenderness of the Father in my personal journey and have opportunity to share it with others.......

"I am reluctant to push God off His judgment seat and take my place there to pronounce on others when I have neither the knowledge nor the authority to judge anyone.  No one at this table has ever seen a motive.  Therefore, we cannot suspect what inspired the action of another.  Remember Paul's words after his discourse on homosexuality in Romans 1.  He begins chapter 2, 'So no matter who you are, if you pass judgment you have no excuse. In judging others you condemn yourself, since you behave no differently from those you judge.'  I am reminded of a statement by the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy: 'If the sexual fantasies of the average person were exposed to view, the world would be horrified.'
"Homophobia ranks among the most shameful scandals of my lifetime.  In this closing decade of the twentieth century, it is frightening to see the intolerance, moral absolutism, and unbending dogmatism that prevail when people insist upon taking the religious high ground.  Alan Jones noted that 'it is precisely among those who take their spiritual life seriously that the greatest danger lies.'  Pious people are as easily victimized by the tyranny of homophobia as anyone else."
My identity as Abba's child is not an abstraction of a tap dance into religiosity.  It is the core truth of my existence.  Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness profoundly affects my perception of reality, the way I respond to people and their life situations.  How I treat my brothers and sisters from day to day, whether they be Caucasian, African, Asian, or Hispanic; how I react to the sin-scarred wino on the street; how I respond to interruptions from people I dislike; how I deal with ordinary people in their ordinary unbelief on an ordinary day will speak the truth of who I am more poignantly than the pro-life sticker on the bumper of my car.
We are not for life simply b/c we are warding off death.  We are sons and daughters of the Most High and maturing in tenderness to the extent that we are for others-all others-to the extent that no human flesh is strange to us, to the extent that we can touch the hand of another in love, to the extent that for us there are no"other."
This is the unceasing struggle of a lifetime.  It is the long and painful process of becoming like Christ in the way I choose to think, speak, and live each day.........But whenever I allow anything but tenderness and compassion to dictate my response to life-be it self-righteous anger, moralizing, defensiveness, the pressing need to change others, carping criticism, frustration at others' blindness, a sense of spiritual superiority, a gnawing hunger of vindication-I am alienated from my true self.  My identity as Abba's child becomes ambiguous, tentative, and confused.
Our way of being in the world is a way of tenderness.  Everything else is illusion, misperception, falsehood. 
The compassionate life is neither a sloppy goodwill toward the world nor the plague of what Robert Wicks calls "chronic niceness."  It does not insist that a widow become friendly with her husband's murderer.  It does not demand that we like everyone.  It does not wink at sin and injustice.  It does not accept reality indiscriminately.......The way of tenderness avoids blind fanaticism.  Instead, it seeks to see with penetrating clarity.  The compassion of God in our hearts opens our eyes to the unique worth of each person.  "The other is 'ourself''; and we must love him in his sins as we were loved in our sin."

How do you view God?  How do you view sin?  How do you view yourself in this world?  Are you experiencing God's tenderness?