Give me strength Almighty God to speak the presence of your Son into the lives of others. Help me not to see with the prejudice and presumptions of my own eyes but instead with Christ's eyes which seeing every sinner as someone needing love and salvation. And most of all always let me hear your voice wherever you reveal it. Amen.
If I am really honest sometimes I just don't like people, certain people, not all people, not nearly most people but some people, really, just a few people. Most often those are people who make me feel uncomfortable. People who seem really different from me, people outside my comfort zone. I don't believe in judging a book by its cover but sometimes just seeing someone or hearing someone can just set me completely on edge.
Scripture is filled with stories of in groups and out groups, both the Old and New Testaments have such stories. Sometimes those stories completely castigate and reject those out groups even to the point of calling for their destruction as in the purge of the Canaanites from the Promised Land and other times the point of the whole story is raising up how someone, often Jesus or someone he spoke about in a parable, transcended above the cultural divisions between communities; i.e. Jew and Gentile, Jew and Samaritan.
One of my hobbies has been performance magic. Magic based in sleight of hand, covert actions, gaffs, gimmicks, and deception. I have attended numerous magic conventions and spent a fair amount of time with side show performers. I have for periods of time been friends and shared ideas and concepts for performance with well known individuals from that community.
The world of side show artists is filled with folks often heavily tattoed and pierced. For the uninitiated it is often off-putting and at times I still struggle with it but all in all I am far more comfortable with it today than twenty years+ ago. Still depending on the particular artwork and the amount of coverage I can be set back into old feelings of discomfort.
What I have learned, however, is that inked or not inked people are people and whether they tell you their story across the landscape of their body art or with their voice, whether in the coffee shop or in a bar, or in the privacy of counseling their pains, their fears, their hopes, and their needs are all similar even if unique to each in their telling and expression. Even when their stories and the struggles of life are devastatingly different there is that human fear and brokenness that is in us all. Beyond every stereotype there is a person.
If I believe as I do and if you believe with me that Christ died on the cross for all and that all fall short of the glory of God then beyond my fear and beyond our fears we each must have something of Christ to speak into the life of every other person. Knowing what to speak begins in two places, in God's Word and in the life of the person across from us. It begins in studying scripture and listening to people.
How tragic if I am too afraid to listen to that person because they make me uncomfortable or because I think they are too different. Worst of all, giving them a wide, wide berth I may never hear them speak as they speak Christ into my life. Reread that. I may never hear them speak Christ into my life, healing my fears and my brokenness.
That would be tragic indeed because sinner that I am I always need to hear the voice of Jesus.
If I am really honest sometimes I just don't like people, certain people, not all people, not nearly most people but some people, really, just a few people. Most often those are people who make me feel uncomfortable. People who seem really different from me, people outside my comfort zone. I don't believe in judging a book by its cover but sometimes just seeing someone or hearing someone can just set me completely on edge.
Scripture is filled with stories of in groups and out groups, both the Old and New Testaments have such stories. Sometimes those stories completely castigate and reject those out groups even to the point of calling for their destruction as in the purge of the Canaanites from the Promised Land and other times the point of the whole story is raising up how someone, often Jesus or someone he spoke about in a parable, transcended above the cultural divisions between communities; i.e. Jew and Gentile, Jew and Samaritan.
One of my hobbies has been performance magic. Magic based in sleight of hand, covert actions, gaffs, gimmicks, and deception. I have attended numerous magic conventions and spent a fair amount of time with side show performers. I have for periods of time been friends and shared ideas and concepts for performance with well known individuals from that community.
The world of side show artists is filled with folks often heavily tattoed and pierced. For the uninitiated it is often off-putting and at times I still struggle with it but all in all I am far more comfortable with it today than twenty years+ ago. Still depending on the particular artwork and the amount of coverage I can be set back into old feelings of discomfort.
What I have learned, however, is that inked or not inked people are people and whether they tell you their story across the landscape of their body art or with their voice, whether in the coffee shop or in a bar, or in the privacy of counseling their pains, their fears, their hopes, and their needs are all similar even if unique to each in their telling and expression. Even when their stories and the struggles of life are devastatingly different there is that human fear and brokenness that is in us all. Beyond every stereotype there is a person.
If I believe as I do and if you believe with me that Christ died on the cross for all and that all fall short of the glory of God then beyond my fear and beyond our fears we each must have something of Christ to speak into the life of every other person. Knowing what to speak begins in two places, in God's Word and in the life of the person across from us. It begins in studying scripture and listening to people.
How tragic if I am too afraid to listen to that person because they make me uncomfortable or because I think they are too different. Worst of all, giving them a wide, wide berth I may never hear them speak as they speak Christ into my life. Reread that. I may never hear them speak Christ into my life, healing my fears and my brokenness.
That would be tragic indeed because sinner that I am I always need to hear the voice of Jesus.
RSS Feed