State of My Heart: Reflective, concerned, and wondering how we find our way back to one another.
Today’s Reading
Genesis 18-20
There was a lot in today’s reading that made me stop.
But strangely, what I haven’t been able to stop thinking about is something incredibly simple.
Kindness.
Before I get into that, though, I think I need to explain something about this journey.
Just because I believe in God and I’m reading the Bible doesn’t mean I automatically agree – or disagree, for that matter – with everything associated with organized religion.
In fact, one of the reasons I first decided to read the entire Bible many years ago was because I wanted to understand it for myself.
Something this important has been interpreted, paraphrased, taught, debated, and sometimes weaponized by human beings for thousands of years.
I wanted to read the words myself.
I wanted to ask my own questions.
I wanted to form my own relationship with God instead of simply inheriting someone else’s understanding of Him.
And I think that’s especially important right now.
I’ve watched people completely reject God because of something terrible a pastor, priest, church, or religious organization has done.
I understand the hurt behind that.
But I also find myself thinking about how easily we do this in other areas of life.
One police officer does something terrible, and suddenly all police officers are terrible.
A religious leader does something terrible, and suddenly religion – or even God Himself – is the problem.
But human beings are human beings.
There are good and bad people everywhere.
I’ve personally met incredible priests, pastors, police officers, and people from all kinds of backgrounds and belief systems.
Maybe the better question isn’t what group someone belongs to.
Maybe it’s simply:
Who is the person standing in front of me?
What Genesis 18 Made Me Think About
Hospitality stood out to me immediately.
Abraham sees visitors and welcomes them.
He offers them rest.
Water.
Food.
Care.
There is something so beautifully uncomplicated about that.
A person is in front of you.
You treat them with kindness.
And it made me think about the world we’re living in now.
Something changed around COVID.
I don’t pretend to understand all of it, and there are still things in my own life that I’m working to undo from that period.
But one thing feels impossible to ignore.
We seem angrier.
More suspicious of each other.
Quicker to judge.
Quicker to label.
Quicker to decide that someone is either “with us” or “against us.”
Politics has certainly become part of that.
And this is where I struggle.
When did disagreeing with another human being become permission to hate them?
When did someone’s vote tell us everything we needed to know about their heart?
When did we become afraid to have honest conversations with people who think differently from us?
And when did wishing harm on another person ever become acceptable simply because we disagree?
I don’t care what shape you are.
What size you are.
What color you are.
What political party you vote for.
What religion you practice.
Or whether you practice one at all.
I care about how you treat people.
Are you kind?
Are you honest?
Do you try to leave people better than you found them?
Because underneath everything else, we’re human beings first.
Maybe We Need the Basics Again
Genesis keeps bringing me back to this.
Human beings haven’t changed nearly as much as we’d like to think.
Pride.
Jealousy.
Fear.
Power.
Judgment.
Division.
We’ve been wrestling with these things since the beginning.
But so are hospitality.
Compassion.
Faith.
Prayer.
And love.
Maybe the answer isn’t as complicated as we’ve made it.
Maybe sometimes we need to return to the basics.
Be kind to the person in front of you.
Help someone who needs help.
Listen before assuming.
Ask questions.
Have conversations.
Disagree without hatred.
And before saying something – especially publicly – pause long enough to ask:
Is what I’m about to put into the world adding something good to it?
That doesn’t mean avoiding hard conversations.
Quite the opposite.
Questions are important.
Debate can be important.
Being exposed to people who think differently from us is part of how we examine and develop our own beliefs.
But disagreement doesn’t require cruelty.
The Power of Intercession
Then I reached Abraham’s intercession for Sodom.
And this stopped me for a completely different reason.
Abraham didn’t simply look at a broken place and condemn everyone in it.
He prayed.
He pleaded.
He asked God to consider the righteous people who might still be there.
And it made me wonder what would happen if we did more of that.
What if instead of immediately judging people, we prayed for them?
What if instead of assuming someone’s intentions, we asked questions?
What if instead of rooting for someone’s downfall because they’re on the “other side,” we genuinely hoped for something good to happen in their life?
How powerful could we become as a society if we stopped spending so much energy fighting one another and started remembering that we’re all trying to navigate this incredibly complicated human experience together?
I don’t know.
But I know what today’s reading made me want to do.
Be kinder.
Judge less quickly.
Listen longer.
Pray more.
And keep looking for the human being underneath all the labels.
Years ago, when I first saw the “He Gets Us” commercials about Jesus, I remember feeling something I hadn’t expected.
Hope.
Not necessarily hope for organized religion.
Hope for humanity.
Because underneath everything we’ve layered onto faith over thousands of years, I keep coming back to something remarkably simple:
Love God.
Love people.
Maybe we’ve complicated something that was never supposed to be complicated.
Questions I’m Leaving With
When did disagreement become something we fear instead of something we can learn from?
How often do I judge someone’s label before taking the time to know their heart?
What would happen if I prayed for people more often than I criticized them?
And before I contribute another opinion to an already noisy world, can I pause long enough to ask whether I’m adding more light – or simply more noise?
Today’s Takeaway
Maybe changing the world doesn’t always begin with changing someone’s mind.
Maybe it begins with remembering how to treat the person standing in front of us.
Until next time… keep noticing.