Looking Beneath the Surface

When we take the time to look beneath the surface, we are often able to extend understanding and grace.

It can be awfully easy to judge others. When we meet someone for the first time and they are rude or snippy, it’s easy to write them off as, not a nice person. It’s an easy mistake for adults to make and super easy for kids.

We tend to judge people by what we see on the surface. My daughter will come home sometimes and talk about how some girl at school was really mean to someone or said something very inappropriate. It doesn’t take too long in the conversation to figure out that life in that child’s home is often in total chaos. I’m not excusing the behavior, but trying to make an effort to help her to understand.

First impressions are everything to us and changing our minds about someone after they have snubbed us or treated us poorly, often takes some serious thought and more importantly, prayer. Forgiveness is not in our nature. It’s a gift from the Holy Spirit and one most of us, including myself, could use more of.

I recently read in John 7:24, “Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.” Those words came from Jesus, himself and he was arguing with the Pharisees about Jewish law. The Pharisees were never ones to look beneath the surface. Laws were laws and everything was black and white. Grace didn’t have a place in their picture of God.

How often do we take the time to look beneath the surface in a situation where we have been wronged somehow or when we perceive that someone has treated us badly? Is there a chance that the person in question, is fighting a battle that we know nothing about? Is it possible that God is offering us the unique opportunity to extend grace to a fellow human being, like He extends daily grace to us?

I can appreciate the need to be right and when we are wronged, we feel that someone should pay. We want justice when we have been injured or slighted. But, do we want justice when we were the ones who were doing the slighting? Ouch! Surely, we can all think of an example when we were in the wrong and hurt someone’s feelings unintentionally due to our own circumstances at the time.

Perhaps we should begin each day with a desire to look beneath the surface in the people around us. We can pray for God to help us in this quest. We may very surprised at what we find.

We may find that the world is full of hurting people who lash out because they simply don’t know any other way to deal with their circumstances. We may find the opportunity to extend forgiveness and grace and maybe even a helping hand.

If we all tried a little harder to look beneath the surface before we rush to judgement, I wonder what our world would look like. We might be pleasantly surprised. What do you think?

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂