Finger Pointing

"But the Lord answered him and said, 'You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?'" (Luke 13:15-16)
There are times when we all get caught up on different issues and customs in our beliefs.  The pharisees decided to make very strict interpretations of the Ten Commandments, but those interpretations would get in the way of truly loving God.  Even today, while we don't really have as strict of rules regarding the Sabbath (if any at all), we like to get caught on other issues.  We can't help but point our fingers, even when things aren't the way we want them to be.  Sometimes we accuse others of not being good Christians because they don't say a certain prayer or because they don't pray to a certain saint.  Sometimes we don't like people because they go to a centuries old church rather than one in a smaller building.  We can take this a step further and look at how we treat each other outside of church: if somebody does not subscribe to every single opinion of some of our great advocates, s/he is not part of our LGBT family; if somebody does not identify with a certain subculture in our LGBT family, that person is not doing her/his part.  However, when we get caught up with these issues, we are only hurting ourselves.  Sure, we can point all we want, but our shoulders will tire before anything will happen.  God is the ultimate judge, and God has given us what we need to know: how to love.  When we take the time to point our fingers back to ourselves and notice how we are no longer living in the love of God, then we can change ourselves to be closer with God.