Hard to figure out

We went to St. Louis today. I love to go to that city, and now that we live so close, it is a lot of fun. Today, we went to visit Agnes Kelly, a member who has made a miraculous recovery. A month and a half ago, she was on death's door, on a respirator and we wondered if she woudl ever recover. Tuesday she is to come home from the hospital, not to a nursing home, but to her own place. God has done a miracle! He has given her healing that none of us could have ever imagined. It is true. "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever! Amen." (Ephesians 3:20-21 NIV) Who could have imagined that Agnes will be coming home? We prayed for it. We longed for it. We hoped for it. And now, God has accomplished it! Alleluia! Amen!

But the strangest thing happened to us today. We were in the parking garage, waiting for the elevator to go down. The door opened. And as Rachael moved to go into the door, it closed. The person in the elevator closed the door in her face. It was strange. We decided to do the stairs rather than waiting for the elevator. We talked about how strange it was. But then shook it off and went into the hospital.

We got the room for Agnes and went to the elevator. We got on, pushed the 6th floor. A woman got on with us and pushed floor 4. Nothing strange about that. We stopped on floor 4 and the woman moved in front of the buttons and then got off. As she did that, she pushed the 3 and 5 buttons and got off. We said how rude that was, to each other. Then Penny and Rachael dropped the bomb on me. That was the same woman from the other elevator! What was this? What happened? Why would she do that?

I couldn't figure it out. What was this about? We had never seen this woman before. We hadn't even spoken a single word with her. Was it racism? She was a woman of color and we were white. Was it that she disliked us because we were of a different race? Who knows? We sure don't know.

It made me think about the whole thing of sin - how it affects the actions of people on a daily basis. Sin shows itself as one person treats another person poorly for absolutely no reason. How many times does that take place each day? Thousands, perhaps even millions of times a day, people treat one another poorly, for no other reason than they don't like the other person. Sin shows itself.

And it made me wonder, how do you treat someone else, people that you have never met or seen before? How do I treat others? People that I have never met? My daily life should, the way that I treat someone, should reflect the love of Christ. How would Christ treat that person? And that is how I should treat them. I pray that the love of Christ shines through all my actions, my words, the way I treat that stranger on the street. I pray that I won't treat someone the way we were treated today by someone that we have never met.

Give that some thought as you go about your day today.