Maribeth was used to being...
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Maribeth was used to being correct. She was a rule follower, whether a situation called for rules of grammar, Robert's Rules of Order, or traffic laws, Maribeth tried to be "right." Correctness, she was beginning to realize, had become her personal cross to bear -- one she had chosen to carry at some dim point in the past, seeing it as the way to get along in life, the way to avoid controversy. Consequently, she was doubly deep in self-doubt now that she was embroiled in a heated controversy because she had followed "the rules." As she mentally wrestled with the injustice of it all, she began to gain new insight into the incredible impact Jesus had had when he put God's law before human law, compassion before correctness, social justice before legality. Jesus stepped outside the boundaries of human rules time and time again in order to live the law of the Kingdom: unconditional love. Maribeth realized that by caging herself in correctness, she had limited her capacity to respond to those around her with compassion. She recognized, too, that the current argument in which she found herself engaged was about only one thing, power. She had leaned on the power she perceived in human rules all her life; perhaps it was time she turned to a higher authority. Perhaps God's single commandment expressed through Jesus would resolve a number of controversies in her life, the commandment: "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15:12). -- Fannin
