May 28 - Choosing Inclusion

You would not have picked most of the people God put in your life. This episode is about what happens when you stop trying to.

Judgment creates distance. Acceptance creates connection. The way I view others shapes the kind of world I live in.

Corey opens with curiosity as the antidote to judgment — not agreeing with everyone, but getting interested in why they see things the way they do. When he gets curious, the other person starts talking. When they start talking, they come alive. That's service. That's also how sponsorship works: he never gets to sponsor the guys he would have chosen. He's grateful for that every time.

Mike's thread is longer and runs deeper. Around 2010 he was an active atheist, active alcoholic, and liked arguing with Christians at work about their lack of evidence for anything. A coworker asked him one question: what makes you so smart that you know more about this than billions of other people? That sparked something. He started searching for a church. What he found was HeartSong — a United Methodist church that had been making news for opening its doors to the Memphis Islamic Center for prayers while their facility was being built. The pastor, Steve Stone, had built a genuine friendship with the center's leader. Mike didn't even know it was a Methodist church. He just knew it was the kind of place where that kind of thing happened. A couple of years later he found the recovery group that met there. That's where his journey of faith and recovery began. In July he takes on a second appointment — Wesleyan Hills UMC in East Memphis, which shares a parking lot with a Jewish synagogue. His first goal is to find the rabbi.

After the prayer, the episode keeps going — and Mike decides to read the Good Samaritan parable in full, because the point Corey was making about walking alongside someone, not just helping once, is exactly what the Samaritan did. He didn't drop the man off and leave. He made provision and came back. Then 12&12 page 94 on step 10: when we criticize someone we tell ourselves it's constructive, but our real motive is often to feel superior by pulling them down. Corey names it: spiritual superiority. His ego will whisper look at you just as quickly about service as it will about anything else.

The episode closes with the seventh step prayer — because that's what the whole conversation was really about.

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Daily Ripples is a daily devotional reflection connecting recovery principles with the life of faith. New episodes every day at dailyripples.com.