In Spite Of...

On Saturday I wrote a post about something that happened on the way to our soccer game. Long story short, I watched a guy in a truck get mad at some people who were simply trying to tell him the light had turned green. His response: he flipped everybody off. Let the bird go flyin'! And in what was an incredibly awkward situation, when we pulled up several minutes later at the soccer field, so did the guy in the truck. And it wasn't just "a guy"; it was one of the dads on our team. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure he had no idea we were one of the 12 cars behind him that got saluted. Nevertheless, it was just a bit awkward for a moment. And that was the point of my post: sometimes awkward stuff happens. What are you going to do about it? It's part of life.

What an incredibly stupid blogpost. 
So stupid that I deleted it. 

I completely missed the opportunity to start a conversation about the most important part of the whole story. Sure life is full of awkward situations. We're human. We do dumb stuff. The point is that in the midst of people's mistakes, failures, shortcomings, and lapses in good judgment, we still have the opportunity - better yet, the calling and responsibility - to love them. People are going to flip you off. (Hopefully you're not always going to wind up actually knowing the person who flips you off. But if you do, what are you going to do about it?) Aren't we called by Jesus to take people's anger - their attacks and insults and slaps and obscenities - and absorb them? That's what "turning the other cheek" is about. (See Matthew 5:38-48 for more on that subject.) The point is not the awkward situation; the point is the PERSON! As Christ-followers, we should constantly be ready to see and love the person, in spite of their failure. That's what (I hope) we did on Saturday. I just failed to tell you about it.

Are you allowing the Lord to prepare us to diffuse these type of situations rather than further ignite them?

Is there an opportunity in front of you now to love someone not because of something, but in spite of something? Big difference.