One time when I was a student in New Jersey, I made plans to meet a friend at Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City. I wondered how she would find me in the crowds of people who stream through the terminal. That will be easy, she said, you walk so slowly that people will be rushing around you in their hurry to get by. I'll just watch for the turbulence in the otherwise smooth flow of traffic. It was just one more indication that I am enough different from the crowd that I stand out a bit.
Christians are like that.
We listen to different music, respond to a different impulse, cut a different path through life. The world thinks it strange that we don't go with the flow, that we love those whom others hate, even those who hate us, and that we return more than what people ask and deserve from us. We do not respond to the world the way ordinary people do. Rather than a person hating in response to hatred and loving in response to love, Christian behavior and relationships are prompted by the God we worship. Tom Long tells the story about the man who worked and lived in the inner city neighborhood where poverty, unemployment, hunger, and inadequate housing were the norm.