This summer has been flying by…and July seemed to go especially fast! This last month for us was filled with a potpourri of activities. Entertaining, a little bit of travelling, worshipping with our church family, working in our flower beds and lots and lots of mowing. As I shared back on June 3rd, mowing has been a favorite activity for me for many years…but due to bad health I had not been able to do it for quite some time. This summer the Lord has richly blessed me with greatly improved health, and I have been able to mow with very few negative side effects. What a blessing!
As a result of all of the hours on the mower, I actually have a tan this year! Don’t worry…I have used sunscreen…but I have enjoyed looking in the mirror and actually seeing a color other than pale white. Seeing my brown skin has reminded me of something I did as I was growing up. Those were the days when we would lather ourselves in baby oil and then roasted in the sun (what in the world were we thinking??). But I can remember checking my tan by turning one of my hands up and one down so that I could see the difference. Since my palm doesn’t tan, it was a great way to see my progress in attaining some color.
As I did this “action” the other day, a lightbulb went on in my head. I stood there looking at the two totally different colored hands, and I thought about the fact that even though my skin color is different, inside they are still my hands. The outer covering may differ, but that’s where the difference stops.
My next thought was about the times when I have let how someone else looks, affect my treatment of them. Just because their skin color may be different than mine…or their clothing differs from mine…or the fact that they are covered in tattoos and I’m not…or maybe their number of piercings outrank mine…I shy away or ignore them. Regardless of our differences, our insides are the same. We were all created in God’s image and I should not let our differences control my actions and reactions.
If I’m honest, I failed at this recently. We walked into a fast food restaurant and there wasn’t anyone at the cash register. We waited for quite some time and finally, a young man walked up to the counter. One look at him and I rashly made my opinion of him and his work ethic. I immediately thought that we were in big trouble and that it would be a miracle if he even got our order correct.
Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. We soon figured out that he had been away from the cash register because they were shorthanded, and he had stepped in to help get the order delivered faster to the person ahead of us. We then placed our order and found out that it would be a 15-minute wait for one of the items that we wanted. This young man apologized for the inconvenience, gave us a discount and also offered a free item on the menu for each of us because of our wait. He was courteous, friendly and genuinely wanted to put the customer first and feel welcomed. Then he told us to go ahead and sit down and he would deliver all of our food to us when everything was ready and he did just that.
I left that restaurant feeling very convicted. Just because someone appears different than me, it does not give me the right to pass judgement. I need to work on seeing each person through God’s eyes. We read in I Samuel 16:7, “But the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Ouch. I sure fall short in this area.
How about you? As you go throughout your day today, will you look at others through your eyes or through God’s? Will their color/clothes/piercings/odor/age/beliefs…etc. etc. etc…skew how much you show God’s love to them? I hope not. Maybe if you and I start seeing others as God’s creation just like us…with the same insides as us…they won’t feel our judgement but our love. That’s what we are called to do. “This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you” (John 15:12). The question is: Are we doing it?
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