Practicing the Presence of People: How We Learn to Love

by Mike Mason

A good friend of God will not be able to restrain his love for people. Do you love God? Look at the person beside you and you’ll know.

People are less like stationary stones than like rivers, always flowing, changing from moment to moment. The best way to see people is to jump into the river with them and form relationships. Then, at least, we are moving together. This is what relationships are: people in motion together. Only as we move together does it become possible to find stillness.

In the beginning God separated the light from the darkness, and so must we. We must help one another to see and to walk in the light. We do not disregard the darkness, but we do relegate it to the fringes of a person’s being, not the center. In this way the darkness becomes only a frame for the true picture.

Does God seem distant or absent? It may be because you have chosen to distance yourself from His people.

I do not know that I am needed in this world. But as God’s child I do know that I am wanted.

To love is to want others as we ourselves long to be wanted.

It matters not how much or how little we read. What counts is whether we enter into a living relationship with the author. For we do not learn from others so much as through them; we grow not on our own but in relationship.

Self-condemnation never works; it only digs the hole deeper. Though we may feel pious, we’re indulging in a weak-willed excuse for not living life to the full. Sitting sullenly atop our own dung pile, we cut ourselves off from God’s love. Meanwhile our Father is inviting us to get up and walk into the light, to come and live in a place that is beyond all shame.

We think that if something is too easy or natural, it won’t count. In this way we devalue our true gifts.

“The real voyage of discovery,” wrote Marcel Proust, “consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” We want a fresh newspaper every day, but how often do we change the way we read it?

learning to chatter uninhibitedly to God is tantamount to quieting the mind completely.

But don’t we have enough pain of our own without taking on the pain of others? Herein lies a grand illusion, for there is no such thing as “pain of our own.” The only private pain is the pain of isolation, which is hell. All other suffering is communal. Like love it can only be shared. If we are to share people’s joys we must also share their sorrows. Shrinking from sorrow, we shrink from joy as well.

Showing mercy to yourself will mitigate your suffering. Showing mercy to others brings joy.

Mercy sides with people even when they are wrong, as Jesus did. Satan is an accuser, but Jesus is our advocate.

Satan kicks us when we’re down, but Jesus gets down beside us to absorb the kicks.

Christians can get all hot and bothered about what other people believe. But mercy is less interested in what people believe than in why. Many unbelievers have good reasons for their unbelief. Looking for the whys of belief instead of the whats helps us to love people rather than to judge them. “Mercy triumphs over judgment” (James 2:13) because mercy is more interested in maintaining relationships than in being right.

The message to repent is more an announcement than a warning. It is a proclamation of such great, great joy on the way, that preparations are in order. The joy is not here yet, but it is coming.

Sadness is the sign that we are finally giving up on trying to atone for our own sin. Sadness is the beginning of mercy.

One day when my wife asked me cheerily how I was, I hung my head and moaned, “Oh, Karen, I’m so mixed up today.” “Well then,” she responded brightly, “why don’t you just decide to have a mixed-up day?”

Have you room in your life for a mixed-up day? If not, it may be because you see yourself as being mixed up rather than your day, and this terrifies you.

The Bible describes God as a “rock” and a “refuge”: “God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble” (Psalm 46:1). The Lord resides in that strong, quiet place deep within, and it is no shame to hide ourselves there.

Maybe I can cut myself some slack, allow myself a certain amount of tension, trouble, and plain stupidity without always shouldering the blame. This is not who I am, this malfunctioning misfit, this bumbling bucket of bolts. No, the fog I live in is just the chaos I’m pushing through, scrambling to create order as I go. Like Paul I am “hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;… struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9).

I love this guy. I so need to be able to see past my own fog - not take it as me - but as external to me!

We get to thinking that righteousness means hiding our faults, when really the truth is just the opposite. Pride wants to look good, but humility has no fear of looking bad.

The moment the plane leaves the runway, all my problems fall away as if a multitude of invisible cords had been cut, and for a few hours I float free of earthly care.

As simplistic as it sounds, the antidote to self-absorption is the practice of the real presence of God and of people.

The act of listening invites a chatterer (if anything can) to listen to themselves. It’s like standing in a crowd and staring up into the sky. Soon others are craning their necks too, wondering what is so interesting up there. Good listening points people to the wide-open sky of the great silence of God.

Listening to people teaches us to listen to God. Do you find God to be silent? It may be because He is listening to you chatter.

We undo the damage done by eating from the Tree of Knowing by eating from the Tree of Unknowing.

say to my ego, “Excuse me, sir, but you’ll have to stand aside right now. There’s a human being who needs my full attention.”

Either life is practice, or it is performance. It cannot be both.

If you do not have a God who is free to do anything He pleases with your life, then you will not have a God who can set you free regardless of your circumstances.

If we are truly free, then the freedom of others—even the freedom to sin—will be vastly important to us. We would much rather see people freely sinning than have them fall into the clutches of pious legalism.

For forty years I thought that a gift had to be something I was good at, not something I was missing.

Without love we have nothing to pray.

It is not that intercessors are unaware of people’s faults—but they are even more aware of the real person beneath the faults, the perfect child of God inside the rough exterior, and this is the person they choose to relate to and pray for.

sinners, Jesus stuck His foot in the world’s door like a salesman insisting on giving us a personal demonstration of His product: unconditional love.

If faith is a candle in the night, then hope is an anchor buried in the depths of the sea.

Godly hope, in the devil’s eyes, is poison. It’s the one spot of health showing up on the cancerous x-ray of Satan’s plans for the perfect reign of terror. If there is one ray of hope in a troubled marriage, then there is everything. No spiritual gift can save a marriage, but hope can save it. No amount of faith can produce healthy, joyful friendships. But hope and love will do the trick.

Love is not necessarily support, politeness, or hospitality. Some people are better loved at a distance! In these cases, I must sacrifice my arrogance in thinking I can keep everybody happy and be all things to all people. Humbly I accept my limitations, knowing that true freedom functions within boundaries.

The way of sacrifice is pragmatic, realistic. My greatest sacrifice is to accept my human limitations and to live within them.

All of us, in ourselves, are spiritually bankrupt. Like the dishonest steward we must face our bankruptcy and go into receivership. This is the poverty of spirit of the Beatitudes. To live this way is to be blessed.

Many call themselves believers who are not receivers. They like good things, but they also like to be in control of how those good things come to them. This is not receiving but getting. Such people will take, but they will not accept. They will take anything except the risk of vulnerability, and so the mystery of friendship eludes them.

How do I keep this after being hurt so many times? I think I need to hold on to hope - hope that God is still at work. It cant be based on hope in people. or hope in peace. Or hope in not being hurt again. But hope in the hurt being redeemed and healed, again and again.

Friends like to be with their friends. It wasn’t until I realized that Jesus liked being with me, wreck though I was, and that He wasn’t asking anything of me except to settle down and be comfortable with Him, that my nervous depression began to fade.

Eventually I relaxed enough to hear one of Jesus’ most important commands: “Do not be afraid.” Always I’d been filled with terror by the verse, “If you love me, you will obey what I command” (John 14:15). But as I studied the context of this verse, I found that the two chapters surrounding it contain only five small commands: “Trust … in me” (14:1); “Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid” (14:27); “Remain in me” (15:4); and “Love each other” (15:12).

But now I had something I was eager to share with others. I could never get excited about telling anyone how to be saved. But to discover that God is safe, warm, friendly, approachable, and that all He requires of His children is to relax and be ourselves—this is good news!

Many Christians ardently seeking spiritual gifts and power would do much better to seek true friendships instead.

is also what the church is about. Ever wonder why the church is so flawed? Flaws form the best glue for friendship. Indeed a friendship without many shared failures will remain stilted and lame. We connect with others not primarily through our strengths, but through our weaknesses.

Paul knew that the preaching of a man who sticks close to his friends is far more effective than the preaching of an isolated, overworked egoist.

Neither our kind deeds nor our preaching best reveals Jesus to people, but rather the depth of our friendships.

As human beings we were not made to relate on an entirely spiritual plane. Overspiritualization is a strong temptation that has led many astray. Friendship is the mitigator of this unholy excess. As candlelight, in contrast to the glare of electricity, lends a room a soft glow, so friendship softens and naturalizes our religious zeal.