Romans 14:10-13
By: Patrick Christopher Kangrga
The men in my family have always been the unlucky ones. It’s a simple issue of math. We are outnumbered. And for me, the fact that all of my siblings are significantly older than I am has not helped. Add to this that my three sisters are the mature and disciplined ones in my family. Whenever I got into trouble, my mom would scold me, but it was my sisters who determined and dealt out punishment.
I don’t imagine I ever really hated my sisters, but there were times when I said those words, “I hate you!” with passion and with tears of sadness and tears of anger rolling down my cheeks. But I was kid. I got hurt, and it hurt for a second or a minute or a day, and then I moved on.
In our spiritual journeys, God constantly allows us to see things in a new light, in a light of truth. And as I have continued to move on, I have seen more and more of the whole picture of my childhood. I have had the revelation that all that time that I spent judging my siblings for punishing me, I never really owned up to the fact that I had been in the wrong, and they had the right and loving desire to correct me.
But I also saw that just as I was judging my siblings, so too were they judging me. My siblings were disappointed in where they thought I was going to end up in my life. I struggled with this notion for a long while, but then things changed at some point. My siblings began responding differently to my life choices. They were so impressed with the man I was becoming and how I had matured. The praise came more frequently, as if everyday I was learning how to be, and actually was becoming, a better person.
Frankly, this suspension of judgment and the removal of this stumbling block has led me to new places I never thought I would or could reach. Currently, I am spending time in Maryland through the Episcopal Service Corps.
As a part of smy work, I serve as the youth minister at an Episcopal church. And when I look around at all my young brothers and sisters in God, I find that I am reminded of my own childhood. I have to try very hard at times not to pass judgment on some of their actions and reactions. I pray they are not passing too much judgment on me. But I mostly pray that I have not been and that I will never be the same stumbling block in their lives that people, including myself, have been in my life.
For if I want them to learn anything, it is this: That the God of love is our only judge, and that as human beings we exist not to pass judgment and thereby increase human suffering. Never are we to be stumbling blocks, but we live today and until the end of our days so that we might be the ones who help others to remove these blocks to a life of faith, a life fully lived with God and in Christ.
Father of all, we pray that you would keep our families; those bonded by blood and those bonded by the Spirit knit together in Your love. Give us Your discerning eyes to see them in the glory in which You made them and not perceive them only as the people we think they ought to become. For it is in our short-sightedness that we become stumbling blocks, so we pray in the name of Your Son, Our Savior that we might obtain wisdom that will help us to bring into clearer vision Your Kingdom, wisdom that will lead us to be the blessing of Christ in the lives of our brothers and sisters. Amen.