Tara

"I was hoping I would get to meet you!" 

Those were the first words out of Tara's mouth when she walked into the kitchen at the summer feeding program, sometime around late June/early July. I had been working as a substitute server in the program in my first summer as a cafeteria staffer, so I had been there off and on, but I didn't feel like the rest of the staff really knew much about me. They were still asking who I was when I'd walk in the back door. 

So when Tara said those words, I immediately started wondering what kind of rumors were going around about me. Who was talking? Was it good or bad? It must have been good, since she seemed excited, but who was it? Who knew me well enough to be saying anything at all?

Tara went on to explain that she had been bringing her family by the program for lunch off and on for the early part of the summer, and I had "always been so nice" to all of them. She knew she was coming in to work the second half of the summer and hoped that I would still be there, hoped that we'd get a chance to actually meet. 

Now, here we were. 

I hear those words a lot in my life - that I'm always so nice. That I'm friendly. That others sense that I'm really engaged with them and that I'm truly offering my service on their behalf. The truth is, I'm nice to everyone. I don't see a reason to be any other way. Even if I'm having a bad day; that's not your fault, so why should you pay the price for it? 

But what Tara didn't know was that here I was, in a food service position just a year after graduating with my Master's degree, unable to find a job in my field, taking the only job I could find that would give me my Sundays off for ministry, still unknown by most of the others in the department, still being evaluated and judged by the members of my own kitchen when the school year ended, serving a population of students who didn't know my name and probably didn't care to...and I was feeling so small and so invisible. 

Then, in comes Tara, someone I had never met...(remember, I do not recognize faces)...and she may not have known my name, but she knew exactly who I was. She had noticed me, had noticed something about me, had recognized something about me, and she was eager to tell me about it. 

Friends, those kinds of moments make all the difference. All the difference. 

I'm still nice to everyone; I still can't think of a reason not to be. But I think of that moment often, that very excited, almost-ambush kind of moment when someone couldn't wait to tell me that they saw me, that I made a difference somewhere...and I look for my opportunities to offer those kinds of moments to someone else. 

Our world is filled with folks who feel invisible. Folks who are just going about their day, sometimes in places they never dreamed they would be. Folks doing the best they can with the opportunities they've been given. Folks who feel like no one even notices them. 

Folks who need a Tara. Someone to just come running up and say, "Oh my gosh! It's YOU! I was so hoping I'd get the chance to meet you!" 

Someone who says, "I see you. I've been seeing you. And you're awesome." 

Yeah, I want to be that someone.  

God Forgives

We are a people who are pretty good at judgment. And Lord help us, we are even better at it when we're certain that we are in agreement with God on it. 

So we judge "sin" when we see it. We write off sinners as hopelessly lost. We "pray for them," or at least, we say that we're going to. 

And we never forget. 

Sometimes, we might forget the specific thing that someone did that caused us to blacklist them in the first place, but we'll never forget that they were blacklisted. 

Look at our cancel culture. For a number of various reasons, over the course of the past 5-10 years or so, we have been willing to completely write someone off. Take their entire life from them. Wipe their name out of our conversations and our history books. Shut them down. Openly mock them. 

We have seen some celebrities try to make their way back from this. We have seen apologies and repentances. We have seen commitments to treatment and to education. We have seen persons fight back hard against a culture that is all too willing to condemn them forever...and a church that is even more willing than that. 

And yet. 

And yet, Proverbs reminds us that while we're busy being petty, being obstinate, being judgmental, God might not be upset with someone any more. 

God might have already moved on. God might have seen something new in their heart. God might have embraced the bigger picture of all the smaller pieces that we're far too fixated on. 

God may have already forgiven them. 

In fact, we know this is true because God is quick to forgive. That's what the whole Cross thing was about. That's why He sent His Son - to make a way for reconciliation and forgiveness. Even Israel, as often as they messed up, could not incur God's anger forever; He kept forgiving even them. 

He keeps forgiving even us. 

So while we're pretty good at judgment and often think that we're doing the good, righteous, and holy thing by latching onto what God despises and condemning it - forever - I wonder what it would do to our world if we were even better at God's forgiveness, at not staying upset with someone forever.... 

God and Wisdom

I love it when I finally understand something on a deeper level. When I'm able to see angles of a situation that I wouldn't have seen in the past, that maybe nobody else sees yet. When I seem to understand the motivations of the human heart, even when it's not mine. Especially when it is mine. 

This is, I think, the essence of wisdom - the ability to have a perspective, an insight, that feels almost objective or, at the very least, understands intimately its own subjectivity, and is able to respond on the basis of what you perceive that is beyond the obviousness of whatever is in front of you. 

The Bible tells us often to seek after wisdom. To pursue it. To desire it. The Bible tells us that wisdom is a great virtue for a man, a help in times of trouble, and a gift from God. 

All of these things are true. 

But they can lead us to believe that wisdom is the greatest thing that we can attain. That wisdom is the end goal. That if only we would acquire wisdom, we would be set. 

But that is not the case. 

Proverbs tells us that God is greater than wisdom. 

God sees more, knows more, understands more, perceives more angles, has a better perspective, understands subjectivity, achieves objectivity, is keenly aware of motivations and wounds and predispositions. God has a better take on the world, on our lives, on us, than wisdom will ever give us. Than wisdom can ever give us. 

And if that is true (and it is, obviously, because the Bible tells us that it is), then acquiring God, acquiring faith, is greater than acquiring wisdom. 

I can confirm that this is the case. 

This is the case because all the wisdom in the world can tell you one thing about a situation, about a person, about a heart, about yourself, but faith can tell you something completely different. The ability to perceive, to see from multiple angles, to assess your own subjectiveness...it's great. But the ability to believe in something you can't understand, let alone imagine, is something even greater. 

I can't tell you (I'd love to, but we have neither the time nor the space) that God has done something greater than all my wisdom could ever have accounted for. I can't tell you the times that I have seen faith play out in absolutely amazing ways, beyond what the human mind - even in all wisdom - could ever understand. I can't tell you what a great moment it is, what a great feeling, when you finally finally understand, only to have God totally blow your mind with the unexpected, incredible, awesome, wonderful thing only He can do. 

Wisdom is good; God is greater. Proverbs is right. 

Seek wisdom. Obtain it if you can. But cling to faith. For even a mustard seed of faith is greater than all the wisdom in the world. 

God's Single Standard

We live in a world of cutting corners. Recently, I saw a satirical post that showed a woman getting to the checkout line at the grocery store and quickly peeling all of her bananas before placing them in a produce bag, thus paying only for the part of the fruit she was going to eat. (In return, the cashier proceeded to then crack all of the customer's eggs....)

We only want to pay for what we're going to use. We don't want to pay surcharges and upcharges and weights of the disposable parts. And I get it, especially in today's economy. 

But did you know that God has always been concerned with this, too? 

The Bible repeatedly tells us that God hates dishonest weights and measures. (Proverbs 20:10, for example.) God hates it when we're cheating each other. He hates it when we're trying to get more and pay less...or when we're trying to pay less and charge more. 

Did you know that He hates it just as much when we aren't talking about commerce?

Our God is the God of a single standard. One rule. One expectation. And we have all failed to meet it. That's what the New Testament means when it says that all have sinned and fallen short and that there is no one righteous, not even one. 

Every single one of us has exactly the same standard to meet: holiness. And every single one of us has failed miserably to meet it. And every single one of us requires the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross to make up the difference for us. 

We like to think that some of us need more of Christ and some of us need less of Christ. We like to think that some of us are better at this holiness thing than others. We like to think that some of us are less sinful than others. 

But God has one standard. None of us has met it. So every single one of us needs exactly the same measure of Christ: 

All of Him. 

Period. 

Our reward might be different. Our judgment might be different. The measure of His grace poured out on us might be different. Each according to our need (as the Bible also says). But the measure of our salvation is all the same: it's the Cross.

Jesus did not die a little bit for you, a little more for me, a little more for someone else, just a tad for yet another person. He died a full and complete and total death for each and every single one of us. 

That is God's standard.

God and Injustice

We talk a lot about justice in our world today. Our culture seems obsessed with it - racial justice, social justice, criminal justice, civil justice. As soon as something bad happens, we start our rallying cries and start making our signs: "Justice for _______!" Whatever the cause of the day is. 

But underneath our cries for justice are pleas, really, for vengeance. There's this constant undertone of the idea that "someone has to pay." Bad stuff is not allowed to just happen in the world. We have to hold someone accountable. There's no such thing as an accident any more; someone must make restitution for the wrongs of the world. 

The problem is that we're often so intent on making sure someone faces the music that we get lost in the noise. It doesn't take long before our quest for justice no longer even pretends; it's all-out vengeance we're after, and we've honed in on our target. We've identified the responsible party, rightly or wrongly, and we won't give up until they get what's coming to them. 

No wonder our criminal justice system is so messed up. Someone has to pay. Here's this guy. Why can't he pay? And now, we have an unknown number of completely innocent folks wasting their lives away for crimes they didn't commit. (Thankfully, we are now in a period where we are starting to rectify these injustices that we once pursued in the name of justice.) 

Of course, it's not just criminality we're talking about. There are folks walking around with scarlet letters, reputations they didn't earn, nicknames they didn't merit, whispers they can't un-hear. For what? 

For the offense of being perceived as responsible in some way, shape, or form for something "bad." 

JUSTICE! 

But it's not justice. In fact, it's the opposite of justice. In fact, this kind of injustice might be the worst kind of injustice because it's not even grounded in our true desire for accountability; it's rooted in our anger and lust for vengeance. We don't care who pays as long as it's somebody. 

This is detestable to God. Proverbs uses that exact word - detestable. Acquitting the guilty and condemning the innocent - both are detestable to the Lord.

Most of us get the first part of that - we hate it when the guilty go free. We hate when the technicalities let someone off the hook. We hate the responsible party gets to just walk away and leave the trauma trailing behind them. But we're not so good at the second part, though we're finally working on it. 

We have to let justice be justice, and that means sometimes, we don't get answers. Sometimes, we don't get restitution. Sometimes, we don't get accountability. Sometimes, this world is just plain broken and there's nothing we can do about it. 

But we can stop settling for placing the burden on just anyone's shoulders. Because that isn't justice, either. Condemning the innocent? Disgusting. 

And does it really even satisfy that thing in your heart that you think it does? 

(Spoiler alert: no.)