Loving Sandpaper People

What’s the most challenging task you’ve ever had to learn?

• A foreign language?
• A new assignment at work?
• A new software upgrade?
• Your child’s Common Core math homework?

Even more challenging than any of those is the subject of relationships. Someone once said life would be a piece of cake if it weren’t for all the people we have to deal with!

We all have people in our lives who deplete us, don’t we? People who rub us the wrong way. Difficult coworkers. Family members who push our hot buttons. arguments and broken relationships. Twenty years ago, author Mary Southerland wrote a classic book titled, Sandpaper People. And that’s exactly what these people feel like, don’t they?

Sometimes the worst offenders are those closest to us. And sometimes we are the worst offenders to them!

Is the answer to simply withdraw from people who multiply drama in our lives? After all, isn’t life too short to put up with other people making us unhappy?

That’s often our natural reaction. Withdraw from difficult people who interfere with our happiness. We’ve been hurt in the past, so we build walls to protect ourselves from future pain. We hide behind unforgiveness, resentment, self-righteousness, pride, insecurity, anger…the list is as varied as we are.

But if we’re doing that to others, others are also doing it to us. The result is an unloving and unlovable world, and a pretty miserable one, too. If you don’t believe me, just look at current events.

There’s a better way.

The apostle John wrote in 1 John 4:7-9 (NIV):

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.”

Jesus died for us to restore our relationship with our heavenly Father. He came to do what we could not do for ourselves. He lived a sinless life, paid the penalty for sin by dying in our place, and victoriously rose from the grave, that we might call Him Savior and Lord. This is how God showed us the extent of His love. And He did it for us, whose sin made us “sandpaper people” to Him!

This concept of loving one another was important enough that Jesus made it a command. In John 13:34, Jesus said: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, you also love one another.”

Funny thing about commands…if the subject of the command was a natural inclination, then we wouldn’t need to be told to do it. The fact that Jesus made loving one another a command means this does not come naturally! And as hard as I look for loopholes, there aren’t any. Jesus did not command us to love only those who we like or agree with.

So the next time a sandpaper person rubs you the wrong way, ask the Lord for the ability to see that person as He sees them. And ask Him to love them through you. Maybe—just maybe—He is using those sandpaper people to smooth your rough edges and mine!