When you look around at other people, one of the first things you notice is that they’re all different.  And sometimes, just sometimes mind you, those differences can really get to you.

Deep down, one of the things we all hunger for is to have rich and satisfying relationships. I see so many people looking for that something and trying to find it in things or career or, when all along what they’re really looking for is meaning in life, meaning, real meaning comes through relationships. Now I happen to be one of those people that believes that there’s one particular relationship, a relationship with Jesus that’s the most important of all when we’re looking for real meaning, and we’ll talk about that one later this week.

But God made us to be community creatures not hermits and so building lasting relationship is so important in our lives, but so many of us were never taught exactly how to do that. Riding your bike is easy peasy once someone shows us how and we’re fallen off a few times right? It’s the same thing with relationships and one of the things that can really stop us from building those lasting relationships is the fact that we’re all different, and those differences can grate on us to the point where we just give up.

I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember jigsaw puzzles, they don’t seem to use them much any more these days; they’re a much humbler form of entertainment than I guess computer games are. But you get the puzzle and it was 1000 pieces and you’d tip them out of the box and think, “Oh man how am I going to get these together?” They’re all part of the one picture, all different shapes and sizes, they look the same but they’re different and they all have to go in exactly the right place to make up the picture.

Now you either love the challenge or find it absolutely frustrating, bit like that with people. You think of the people in your life at the moment, the ones that are similar to you, some are fast some are slow, some are good communicators others aren’t, some are generous, some are thrifty, some are morning people, some are night people, some are detailed people, some are big picture people. There are so many different dimensions of the differences between people and those differences rub us the wrong way sometimes.

It’s a bit like that jigsaw puzzle we think, “Well I’d like to have all these relationships in place, I’d like to have the picture together but you know something, it’s just such a hard work I couldn’t be bothered.” Relationships can be frustrating but we can’t live without them. Just look at those dimensions of difference again, fast and slow, some people and I’m one of them, we like to get things done quickly we’re outcome focussed we’re always planning and trying to achieve outcomes. Other people, well they’re much more leisurely and their slower and those people and the relationship people, they create relationships much better than fast people like me.

Some people are good communicators, but others aren’t, it’s just as well we’re not all preachers. Some people are generous, boy we need those, and other people they’re thrifty and you know we need those too. Some people do really well at the detail; other people understand the big picture really well.

Actually when you look at those differences, we need them all for things to work well and that’s what the Apostle Paul wrote all those years ago, he said:

I want you to think about how all this make you more significant not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge, it’s all the different but similar parts arranged and functioning together. If the foot said, “I’m not elegant like the hand, embellished with all those rings, I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would it make it so? If the ear said “I'm not beautiful like the eye, limpid and expressive, I don’t deserve to have a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from your head? If the body was all eye how could it hear? If it was all ear how could it smell? As it is we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where He wants it. (1 Corinthians 12:14-18)

I love how Paul starts that off you know this sense that being a part of the body different but similar meant to compliment one another makes us more significant rather than less significant. You know when all the instruments of the orchestra play the one piece together that’s when life really sings. We need each other, now sure differences come with pluses and minuses, the pluses though are that we benefit from each other.

My wife, Jacqui who works in the ministry she is a detailed person, if you ring up the ministry or you write to us chances are she’ll be involved in responding to that; and she cares for people who ring and she’s always wanting to fix this up and make sure that CD goes out, you know she loves the detail. I tell you without someone like that in our ministry it just wouldn’t work, I’m a big picture person I like the story, I’m a story teller and Gary our Assistant Director, Gary’s a really relational sort of a guy, he binds things together really, really well.

We’re all different but we benefit from one another’s differences even though the differences sometimes rub us up the wrong way. Why did God put those differences there? I think to teach us humility, to teach us not to be the top dog, to help us to learn that real significance happens when we lay down our pride and our rights and our haughtiness and live in relationships and community. In society for instance we lay down our right we’re subject to the law it’s the price of being in community, now that’s the macro scale.

And the micro scale it’s the same thing, if I want to live in community with you I have to lay down some of my rights, I have to let you be different to me. To have my way all the time to make everyone look like me to have everyone nod when I speak, my way or the high way that’s not community, that’s not relationship its not reality. In real life people are different and they have different perspectives and by and large that creates a rich tapestry.

People who are closed off to that are stunted, people who are open to that are some of the smartest people I know, as long as they do that in a discerning way. I’ve learned so much by accepting other people for who they are, for their differences and learning from them. Does that mean that I’ve become just like them? Of course not, but I can take on the good things from them to make me richer.

A man called Graeme, who mentored me taught me how to listen and how to reflect and how to think about things. Another man called Hake one of the smartest people I know taught me never to have pride in my own ideas, you know he was so smart and he’d hear something better from someone else, he’d lay down his own idea and pick that idea up. A young man that I know, Nick how to burrow into detail and be systematic, the list goes on. I look nothing like them but I’m so much the richer for having been blessed by these different people.

Now to be sure one another’s differences can drive us nuts, but here it is, God made us all different, very different and this diversity is His idea, it’s His choice and when we get with that plan what a rich life. Accepting other people just as they are, right here, right now is the starting point of rich relationships. The point isn’t to change them but as they discover who we are and we discover who they are what are the good bits from each other that we can share that can contribute to one another’s lives.

And when that happens relationships become richer, they become deeper because that’s the fabric, that’s the rich tapestry that God always planned. We can try and fight the differences, we can try and make other people like us, let’s get a revelation – doesn’t work – because they’re just different. When we get with God’s plan, when we enjoy those differences, when we benefit from those differences, when we accept other people just the way they are, now that’s relationship!