Social Fruitflies

I had to chuckle at the sight of today's UrbanDictionary.com Word of the Day:

Social Fruitfly
Like a social butterfly, without any charm or beauty. An unwanted pest.

It brought to mind an old Randy Harris lesson. One of his points is that every church has a social fruitfly. He even cracked wise and said, "Now some of you think I'm lying, thinking, 'That's not true!... Some church is missing their's because we've got TWO!'" His point was that it takes a whole church to love on people like this. Not just one person can handle the job. Maybe Sister Always-Wears-Purple can give her a phone call & chat -- JUST for 15 minutes, because you can only take a Social Fruitfly in doses. And perhaps Brother Always-Talks-Football can make sure that the Social Fruitfly feels welcome the next time a group is getting together to catch a movie. Partly because Brother Always-Talks-Football would really do well to branch out in terms of thinking about what's important.

Everyone takes their turn. Nobody feels over-burdened. Everybody dispenses a little bit of the grace that they themselves have already received.

Jesus loved the least of these. The Social Fruitflies -- they appear to have been real comfortable around Him. He became known for the love that he showed them. And then Jesus made the pivot to say, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

I think that includes the Social Fruitflies.