Look Closely.

If you were to take a look at the parking lot of our church yesterday you'd have seen a primarily clean and dry area thanks to the generosity of a church member. The parking lot was clean and waiting on cars to park in it. But on the day Christians gather to celebrate the risen Savior, the day Christians gather to worship the God Who has provided them with salvation, the church was empty. If you look at the picture to the right you can't really imagine why the church (the body of believers) hadn't gathered for corporate worship as commanded in the Bible. Yesterday afternoon I played basketball with one of our church members in this nice clean church parking lot. It really felt weird to me as I played basketball and it wasn't because I was playing in shorts and a t-shirt with several inches of snow on the ground (I've done that before). I considered it an almost double-standard for not gathering for worship but gathering to play in the church yard. But there's more to the picture if you look closely at a wider picture of the same parking lot. See the bottom picture is one from just a few feet further away from the parking lot. This shows the real reason we didn't have worship yesterday. It's not because the parking lot or church property wasn't prepared to receive worshipers. We couldn't have worship because of the poor road conditions leading to the church. Even today there are still hazardous conditions on the roads causing workers to be delayed and schools to be cancelled.

We're all tired of hearing about snow and the roads and all that comes along with a huge snow storm like the one we just experienced. But the point of today's post is not about the snow but about the perspective we carry with us of others. Often times we look with a cursory view of someone's situation and make a snap judgment. We all do it. Don't say that you don't. From time to time we all make a quick evaluation of someone. The problem is we are usually taking a view of their situation like the upper picture of our church. We don't have all the information and our judgment of them is exactly that, a judgment. Instead we need to take a wider view of someone's situation before we come to a conclusion on why they are doing what they are doing. Some times people are experiencing the worst days of their life. Others are just having a bad day. Regardless of what is going on in their life we need to be wise like James tells us to be in James 1:19 where he writes, "Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry" (NIV). What we really need to do to follow James' counsel is to look closely at the big picture and not make a snap decision based off a narrow view. It will help us not sin and it might even help the other person out on a very bad day.


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