Note: On Fridays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates nearly 12 percent of Americans move every year. And whether that move is across the country or across town, it’s an opportunity to start fresh. We can arrange the furniture and the cupboards as we like, find new friends, discover new restaurants, restart our faith lives as members of a different congregation, and perhaps leave behind some bad habits and behaviors. In some ways, it’s like receiving the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation—we start 
anew, clean and fresh.
Except, of course, that the people who know us remember us and our space as they were. Like the people of Jesus’s hometown, they can be a bit cynical. They saw us yell at our children. They heard us gossip about the neighbors. And they have a bit of insight into just how messy our homes, our yards, and our lives were, and aren’t accepting of the possibility that we might have changed or that we always had something to offer them and the world and that it just took a while for it to show.
When Jesus was in this situation, he didn’t call people out beyond a mild rebuke. But he didn’t perform the mighty deeds he might have otherwise. It’s a good lesson in how to deal with those who knew us when… and a reminder to us to be open to the possibility of change in others. If we’re not, we will be diminished.
