Well it's been a while. Figure if I'm going to have this thing I better wright on it. So spring work has been to say the least hectic and with one thing after another I've become quite busy. I find myself spending so much time at work and thinking about work that very little of anything else do i think about. However God; being faithful (far more faithful than myself) to finish the work he has started in me always finds pieces of time to speak to, convict, soften, break, uplift and mold me.
We recently undertook a job of picking rock from a field we planned to plant to pasture. A job I thought I had left behind in Idaho however turns out there are rock here too. Well I rounded up the neighbor high school kids and the other hired hand that works here and we set out to clean this field of rocks. I've finally graduated to driver instead of rock picker so that was nice. And as my new job of manager, I got to watch them pick the rock from the field and throw them in the bucket of the loader. My job basically was to make sure they got them all and no one got hit by rocks. My position high on the loader and my fascination for people watching I got to observe eight hours of interaction amongst three people. I observed many things but one thing really hit me. As we moved through the field each person had their assigned position around the front of the loader. The one man that i work with daily was keeping a close and i do mean close eye on these young men and every time they would miss the most minuscule rock he would leave his designated area walk into theirs and pick the one rock they had missed roll his eyes at them and grunt (yes grunt). He would miss five or six rocks on his side just to make a spectacle of the other workers one small mistake. He never missed a chance to pick up behind them and give them a good guilt trip. I was a little upset and had to get a handle on the situation before it escalated however as a part of my curiosity i allowed it to go on to see if he would realize what he was doing. He never did he continued until I was forced to say something.
Well after this I had to ask myself some questions. Do you go out of your way to point out other peoples problems (no matter how minuscule they are)? Do you take pleasure in pointing out those mistakes? Do you condemn other people for making the same mistakes you are making?
And ultimately do you extend the same amount of grace to others as you expect them to extend to you.
Since this experience I've noticed that people in general expect far more grace from others than they are willing too extend to others. God commands us in his word to Love your neighbor as yourself. In order to love you have to extend grace you have to look past the persons faults and love the person. Christ demonstrated this not only in that he died while we were still sinners but also when he washed the disciples feet. A story I'm sure you are all familiar with people talk about his servants heart and while that is part of the story more profound to me is that Christ washed all twelve of the disciples feet. You see he washed Judas feet. He knew Judas would betray him to his death in less than eight hours and yet he extended the same amount of love and grace to him. Wow ! Do you love people who don't like you? Do you love those who you can't stand to be around? How about those who the world has deemed unlovable? Jesus Christ did and does.