Clear As Mud

A quote from an article I read this past week:

"When Jesus loved a guilt-laden person and helped him, He saw in him an erring child of God. He saw in him a human being who His Father loved and grieved over because he was going wrong. He saw him as God originally designed and meant him to be, and therefore, He saw through the surface layer of grime and dirt to the real man underneath. Jesus did not identify the person with his sin, but rather saw in this sin something alien, something that did not really belong to him, something that merely chained and mastered him and from which he would free him and bring him back to his real self. Jesus was able to love men because He loved them right through the layer of mud." (Helmut Thielicke)

This is something that I have difficulty doing, because I spend too much time trying to figure out why the individual is in my path and their effect on me, vs. what God has planned. So, rather than try to figure it all out, I'm just going to try loving others through their layers of mud. Otherwise, everything will always be clear as mud...