Luke's Gospel describes the appearance of Jesus in the synagogue of Nazareth where listeners rejected His claims to be fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah.  How could he?  Wasn't he just a local guy?  Surely the messiah wouldn't be someone who had hung around Nazareth his whole life--and not even from the most prominent family in town.

When I read these passages, I think of my brothers and sisters.  There were six of us growing up on a farm.  Like most siblings, we competed fiercely and fought constantly.  None of us seemed terribly remarkable to each other, except possibly remarkably annoying.  Yet from that farmhouse came a collection of remarkable adults whom I am almost amazed to call my brothers and sisters.  Growing up, they were simply people that my parents kept admonishing me to love--and boy was that tough a lot of the time!

Loving those who share our daily lives isn't easy most of the time.  We see the faults and virtues but it is so much easier to focus on the faults than to glory in the virtues.  Constant contact with almost anyone causes a certain amount of friction which lessens with distance.

Now it's fairly easy to love and appreciate my siblings.  We aren't on top of each other very often so we don't fight much.  I can see that my formerly annoying 12-year-old brother (whose loud whistle through a gap in his teeth was so mortifying at basketball games) is now a distinguished business leader in Texas.  My bossy older sister is a noted educator and dear friend.  My prissy perfect younger sister who never got less than an "A" in ANYTHING EVER has had a brilliant career in science.

But I still struggle to appreciate my own family on tough days.  Why does my husband get so crabby about decorating for Christmas?  Why do my son and daughter fight so much?  Do the teenage years last forever?

The love that John calls us to is hard because it is so concrete.  It forces us to try to look at things from the viewpoint of those we love who yet irritate us because they are so close.  Maybe my husband gets crabby about decorating the house because he does about 95 percent of the work.  Why can't I focus on that???

I've always been grateful to John for helping us realize how nitty gritty the obligations of love often are.  It's relatively easy to love God because God's not in your face about what you've done to annoy him lately.  God doesn't point out your defects and failures.  God doesn't come in after curfew or need a ride home from the mall when you're stressed out from work.

I don't know that meditating on John makes what he calls us to much easier in practice.  It is reassuring to know, however, that Christians have been struggling to love their "brothers whom they see" for a lot longer than I've been working at it!