There I sat at a high school graduation just a few hours ago and I was thrown back to my own college days. At that time in my life I had no money to speak of so I would go to the mall and people watch. I wasn’t a believer at the time, so my thoughts were all over the place regarding people’s appearance, the way they were acting or something as simple as the way they walked. I would critique and categorize each one who passed by. I found that interesting. It wasn’t that I was making fun of people or determining which ones I was better than. It was just a hobby of mine, people watching. Well, I was doing it at the graduation this evening, some 43 years later.
There’s a saying that goes something like this: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” I still analyze people passing by. But today I looked hard at them and said to myself, God loves those people just as much as he loves me. I wonder if they know the Lord. I also wonder what their back-story is. Who were their parents, where did they go to high school, did they go to college, where was their first job, what do they do now, how many times have they been married, is or was it a harmonious union, do they go to church? I think to myself, that person was once someone’s little baby. How were they raised? Were they raised in church? When you think like that other people watching takes on a whole new perspective. We begin to look upon them with compassion and mercy.
People are a lot more than the ones others can laugh at on a “People of Wal-Mart” video on YouTube. I’ve been guilty of judging by people’s appearance for a long time, but now I am slowly beginning to see them differently. I believe it began when I asked the Lord to let me see others thru HIS eyes and not my own. We must learn from our mistakes and shortcomings or we are no different than the world we seek to change. rlkeller
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