November 5: Don’t Let Your Assumptions About People Keep You From Encountering Jesus In Them.
GET GOING
Several years ago, at the end of a very difficult day, I thought to myself, "I don't feel grateful at all!" My son was sick, one of my parents had just been diagnosed with cancer, and I was completely overwhelmed with work. I literally said this aloud standing alone in my kitchen: "Screw feeling grateful." The second it passed over my lips, I recognized my mistake. The research participants didn't talk about "feeling grateful"; they all "practiced gratitude." There's a big difference between feeling and practicing. Sometimes when we're wading through tough (and very real) challenges, we don't feel grateful. But that shouldn't stop us from practicing gratitude. I stopped right that minute, drew a deep breath and said, "I'm grateful that I'm home and that the pizza place delivers." It didn't cure my son or make the cancer go away, but it did remind me that there is always a spark of light even in the darkest of places. Sometimes, we just have to fan it a little to make it grow, and the best way to do that is with a little gra
Over the years, I have become friends with a lot of people who are or have been in poverty. Some of them live in other countries, and some live here in America, but all of them ended up in poverty for reasons outside their control. They were given a poor education or no education at all. Some were arrested for small crimes as teenagers, and their records made it difficult to get a job for the rest of their lives. There are a lot of reasons people end up in a rough place, but all of them need the help of the community to get them back on their feet.
It is easy to have opinions about people who need help. You hear people from a relational distant say that “helping hurts,“ or they wonder aloud why unemployed people don’t work a little harder to get a job. But when you come alongside people and walk with them for a while, you learn that helping actually helps.
Relationships have the power to transform us in ways opinions never will. If we talk about a group of people without developing a relationship with them, we’re bound to get it wrong. But when we make new friends, we find we are changed in the process. We might help them by connecting them with a job, and they might help us by exploding our preconceived notions about the disadvantaged so more love can get in. We find out we need Grace for all the ways we had mischaracterized people.
If there’s a group, you’ve made some assumptions about, go make some new friends. You’ll meet Jesus in one another.
Who have you made assumptions about? How can you reach out to them and friendship?
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