Jesus loved the man
Who could
not see or understand
Just as He
loves me and you
And He
taught that we should love as He did when He pleaded
“Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
These are
words from one of my favorite Gospel songs.
They remind me that every person I meet is a loved child of Heavenly
Parents, just as I am. A guy comes
running up to me and starts yelling about how much he hates my church and tells
me where I can shove the message I was going to share with him? Yep.
He is a loved child of Heavenly Parents.
I wait seemingly forever in line at the self-checkout area only for
someone else to swoop in and take my spot when it opens? You got it.
That lady is a loved child of Heavenly Parents.
As the
narrator of “Dragnet” would say; the stories you have read above are true. The names have been changed to protect the
innocent (or excluded because I don’t know them). The first happened in southern Minnesota almost
20 years ago on my LDS mission. The
latter happened just a week ago at my local Smith’s Marketplace. Both times, for whatever reason, the lyrics
above came to my mind to help me stay cool and calm.
The more
I think about it though, the more I feel like I need to apply this to
myself. I wonder how many times I have
been “the man that could not see or understand” in someone else’s story? Have words that meant no offense actually
been so due to my lack of understanding?
Has my inaction inconvenienced another?
Have I lost my patience with my kids without understanding fully what
was going on? The answer to that last
question is not only yes, but often.
I don’t
want anyone to walk around feeling guilty all the time or that they aren’t
enough. All of us are enough as is. And we really do need to remember that. But trying to improve as a person should also
be a life long pursuit.
Can we be
quicker to extend forgiveness and grace to those around us? I am not talking about giving unlimited
chances to those who blatantly hurt and abuse, but when we have a
misunderstanding or an inconvenience, can we try to view the other person as a human
being? Can we recognize that we often
don’t see or understand the experiences, feelings, and perspective of those we come
in contact with and try harder to see where they are coming from?
I hope others
can find that grace for me. And I
certainly hope I can find it for them.
The full song can be heard here.
For a considerably better take on this topic, please check out this talk by Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf here.
