The following two encounters just made me grumpy. And I sat down and thought, I need to love these people.

The person who just asked me, “It’s a fact that drums manipulate brain alpha waves. How do you respond to that?”

The woman I was just standing next to who said, completely out of the blue, “tummy.” To which I responded, “I’m sorry?” And she said, “You have a big tummy.”

And that made me think: whom else do I need to choose to love today?

The people who assume I don’t believe truth exists since I’m a friend of emergent. And those who smugly say, “You postmodernists say there are no absolutes; but that statement is an absolute; so your whole belief system has internal inconsistencies and is self-defeating. You lose.”

Those who say YS stopped hosting the emergent convention and – in one year – will stop publishing the eYS line of books because of all the heat we took from conservatives. And those who praise us for the decision for moving away from the heretics.

Those who wrongly malign my friend Tony Jones for grasping for power, or for being arrogant.

A couple pastors at my church who I find judgmental (is that ironic, I’m judging them!) and non-missional.

J.M. and R.L.

The woman who recently spent much of a week trying to convince me that she is the most self-actualized person in the world.

The liberal who writes off YS as too close-minded and conservative; the fundamentalist who writes off YS is too open-minded and liberal.

The one who stole.

Those who continue to use war language when talking about today’s teenagers, or about defending Christianity or the family or our way of life.

As I write each of these, I’m praying for these people, that they will experience God’s grace and love today. Today (at least today) I choose love.