You are a stranger to me, but you shouldn’t be.  All of us are unique, yet much the same.  Created in the image of God, we cry out to love and be loved.  Living in a fallen world we strive to acquire from it what we need, but it isn’t there.  We are wounded from the battles, but we fight on, desperate to preserve what is left of us, to attain a moment’s peace.  We look at each other with varying degrees of suspicion, never certain who can really be trusted.  None of us can be trusted, not fully.  We are but human, both wonderful and tragic; capable of great good and great evil; yet loved by our creator such that He made Himself one of us that He might save all of us, if we will have it.

So it is that in my humanity I fear you, but by the Holy Spirit within me, I love you.  It is by that Spirit that we can come together, building a trust not based on human frailty, but on the One who never fails.  Together we can learn to give; learn to love, learn to live.