Wednesday’s Word

Living Like You Believe…in What/Who?

John 3:17:” For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved.”

Thanks so much for joining me today for Wednesday’s Word & Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power and Trench Classes United. I’m excited to be sharing this break time with you! Grab your coffee and your strand of faith and join me back on the airplane headed for Texas and an experience that also reflects living like we believe…whatever it is we believe!

Have you ever seen something on someone that you just couldn’t stop looking at? As though your eyes were glued to it, and then suddenly the person catches you staring and you pretend to not be staring? J L J So I’m on the plane waiting for the connecting flight passengers to begin boarding and the staff is getting the flight ready when another flight steward joins them.

Hmmm, how to describe him without putting him in some sort of box…well, he was definitely in touch with his feminine side. I’ll start from the feet up, because that’s what I saw first. He had loafer-type tennis shoes on and amazingly toned and tanned legs that were…yup, newly shaved! My gaze continued to look up and he had shorts on, and a blue Southwest Polo-type shirt on. I almost gasped as I noticed that his nails were manicured with the white tips and on his ring finger was a gorgeous ring!

My eyes were glued to that ring. I was trying to determine if it was a band or – nope, there was a big diamond sticking out from the middle of it!

His face was tanned, big brown eyes with beautiful eyebrows. His hair was bleached blond with its original dark color seeping its way through turning it almost orange. My eyes went to his ring again, and his manicured nails. I can’t tell you how many times this happened –I’d be mortified if someone had counted and told me. L J

And as if that wasn’t enough to teach me a lesson, our Father placed a couple right beside me. I didn’t have much of a strain to see she obviously had a faith, a belief system of sorts for she wore two different rubber-type bracelets – you know the one’s I’m talking about? Anyway, one said “More of Him and less of me,” and the other one said something like: Savior, one life, one purpose. Well, that’s cool, I thought to myself. The conundrum was what I observed during the course of the flight that sent me into my thoughts about living like we believe. See, in this situation, there was something I did count, the bottles of hard liquor that they drank with their diet Coke, but only after I noticed a behavior change. She became very talkative, in a very random sort of way; you know what I’m talking about?

Anyway, I did engage with her, but only after she asked me if I was writing for a newspaper, a book or a magazine. I looked at her like I hadn’t heard her, because honestly I wasn’t sure if I had heard correctly, and she repeated herself.

“Oh, no,” I said, “I have a blog I write for and –“

“It’s really good,” she said.

My eyes quickly scanned to see what she had been reading and it was Tuesday’s Trench Truth. “Thank you.”

We began talking and I learned that they lived about 60 miles west of where my kids are, and that they were part of a very, very large church. She truly talked like she believes. But here’s where the light turned on for me, especially since this was the third occurrence with the same theme in one week! The first one had been a powerful conversation with an attorney who was, as he called himself, a practicing Jew and the conversation was about “gay” marriage. He too learned a powerful truth from his adult children.

Who am I to judge how someone lives what they believe? Didn’t Jesus Himself say in John 3:17 “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved”?

It was with that freedom that I was actually able to converse with this lady, and with the guy with the beautiful ring and manicured nails! It was/is freeing to just let people be who they are without judging them but instead loving them by respecting them. Aren’t they living what they believe? Just because it’s not how I live my life doesn’t give me permission to pick up the gavel and start slamming it down in condemnation! Didn’t Jesus speak with the “ho” at the well with the utmost of gentleness and respect?

Perhaps there is much to be learned and to be unlearned. See, society says: Respect has to be earned; Jesus says respect is to love that person right where they’re at…It doesn’t mean you agree with their lifestyle or their actions but it does mean we quit putting ourselves above others, taking ourselves off the bench and remembering Who is really on the throne!

We just need to be like Jesus, and He’ll do the rest!

Learning and unlearning

Evinda