Day 1937 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 12:14 NIV

So there's this guy that works at the apartment complex where my family and I live. Quiet, reserved, don't know his name, never heard him speak. Every single time I see this guy I wave. Never gotten anything in return. Never even acknowledges that I've been in his vicinity. And when I walked past him on my walk just now, same thing, but it got me to thinking. We don't know someone else's story.

Now I'm not sure the situation or why he never counters my wave with a friendly nod or something in return. Maybe he's just quiet and not all that social. Maybe he has a lot on his mind that he's dealing with. Maybe he doesn't like me because I'm unreasonably handsome. Maybe it's because pretty much every time I walk by him I've just gotten done sweating for an hour and a half and I smell less than amazing. Whatever the case may be, we just don't know what it's like to be anyone else.

Where we run into problems is that we automatically assume everyone else is exactly like us. I heard this little statement quite a while back and it's just really stuck with me ever since. Stop expecting you from anyone else. In other words, stop assuming that anyone else is just like you. They're not. They're all probably quite a bit different. And that's okay. This world is full of people are are truly unique and special, and we should celebrate and appreciate that, not use it as a stick to start beating them with.

We need to stop jumping to conclusions or thinking the worst whenever someone else doesn't act the same as we choose to. There will always be people who are going to live differently, think differently, and believe differently than we do. Again, that's okay. As we talked about yesterday, we shouldn't want to be the same as everyone else. Let's face it, there are quite a few people in this world who are completely miserable, angry, set on messing things up, and just always up to no good. Is that who you want to be? Probably not, so that's where being different becomes a massive blessing.

I think one way that our world has seriously taken off in the wrong direction is that we automatically assume that anyone who's in any way different from us is our enemy. And when we see people as our enemy, our instinct is to fight them until they agree with us. You could say we're seeing some of that right now in our country. People are being forced to take sides all because we can't seem to find a way to get along with people who are different.

Not really supposed to be that way. That's actually what this verse is teaching us to avoid. Be good to others no matter what. Even if they're different. Even if they don't agree with you. Even if they think you're a lunatic for living a life of faith. Even if they don't like the color of your car or whatever else we like to group and judge people by. We need to stop assuming the worst and realize that not everyone is our enemy. We don't have to go to war just because we have differences.

Beating people up, judging them, hating them won't change them. We could slap people with folding chairs and it's not going to make them believe in Jesus any more than they did before. But you know what might help? Being kind. Being respectful. Listening. Trying to understand where they're coming from. Smiling, waving, not laying on your horn because they didn't see you in their mirror. There's a whole list of things that are just kind and decent. That's the list we should picking from, not this nonsense the world's come up with about how and why to dislike others.

We can't base our kindness on getting kindness in return. It's not always going to happen that way. This guy where I live may never speak to me or acknowledge a simple kind gesture. Doesn't mean I'm gonna stop. We cannot stop being kind just because the world often isn't. If we quit being nice to others whenever they were rude or hurtful, then we'd never be nice to anyone. And that's just not who we're called to be.

So just keep being good to everyone that you possibly can. They may notice and appreciate it, then again, they might not. But it's not about the feedback that we get, it's about the seeds of goodness that we're sowing along the way. Who knows, some of those seeds may take root and help someone find their way back to being happy and kind themselves. So don't give up being a good person. We will always need as many of them as we can get!