This week, I came across something that Paul Tillich said - and it just pulled everything together for me. He said, "The first duty of love is to listen." When we think about it, listening is the first requirement for making any real changes in life. I believe that we all struggle from time to time with the difference between knowing something and living it. If we put all our efforts into studying things like relationships or some other area of life, then we are prone to putting most of our energy into having the answers, and then, maybe giving advice.

But listening requires making a personal connection to someone else. Listening requires opening ourselves and stopping long enough to really see and hear what's going on within us, and around us. Listening requires us to shelve our answers. When we refuse to listen, we put all our energies into remaking the world in our own image. But when we really listen, we risk being changed ourselves.

Jesus was saying to them, and to us; that there's no accounting for faith; no scorecards, no report cards, no card carrying memberships, no exclusive association of any kind - at least not in God's scheme of things.