14 Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
It can be hard to get along with some people, because some people are just hard to get along with! Unfortunately, I have discovered over the years that the people I have the most difficult time with are those who are the most like me. They rub me wrong because I see myself in them, and if I can correct them, then I can correct myself. But we are challenged to live at peace with everyone. This does not mean that we must like everyone, we just have to love them as Jesus loves them! We need to get past what rubs us wrong in order to be able to love them unconditionally. This is difficult, self-denying work. But the secret to accomplishing this work is to allow God to work in us, transforming us by His power. When we become more like Him, more holy, set apart for heavenly uses, then those things that stood in the way of living at peace won’t seem to matter. God has no problem being at peace with anyone. So if we are like Him, we won’t have a problem either. The problem is that we aren’t like Him. We aren’t living a holy life, a life saturated with the character of God. Instead, we act and react out of our own selfish needs and desires. We project on other people our own issues just like a movie projector. The screen is blank and the projector casts images. Other people are like the screen. We shine what we think and feel onto them. We fill their screens with so much action and drama that they are unable to overcome our image of them. Could you imagine if we could allow each person to project their own image instead of demanding that they receive our image of them? Or maybe if we projected God’s image onto people, saw people the way God sees them? Would that make a difference in how we interacted with them? This is part of living at peace. We need to see others as God sees them, and not merely as our own worst faults dressed up in another’s body.
The Arnold Journey 