I am not into New Year’s Resolutions but God has been showing me something (and you all know that I am a slow learner) that I need to put into practice this coming year. In the past I haven’t called it judging but really labeling people is a nasty way to rename and justify judging others in a socially acceptable way. Labeling (judging) others is harmful to adults and detrimental to children. For example, a child hears they are a trouble maker as a child enough times that they soon to believe that a trouble maker is what they truly are. But God doesn’t see them as such. He sees His own wonderful creation struggling under guilt and shame or anger and hatred and His heart breaks for them knowing that is not what He had planned for them.
I think if we all dig a bit we can find something similar in our own pasts. I know I have struggled to break the lies of Satan that I swallowed as a child so that I could be free in Christ. Not all but many of them were begun or reinforced by words of others. Arrows used by Satan to sting that stuck in my little heart. God has removed them gently one by one healing the hurt places, allowing the garden to grow. Can you imagine what this next generation could do if they grew up knowing the truth of who God made them? If they grew up without the twisted lies of the evil one tainting their self image?
“Important in any community of faith is an ever-renewed sense of expectation in what God is doing with our brothers and sisters in the faith. We refuse to label the others as one thing or another. We refuse to predict our brother’s behavior, our sister’s growth. Each person in the community is unique, each is specially loved and particularly led but the Spirit of God. How can I presume to make conclusions about anyone? How can I pretend to know your worth or your place?” Eugene Peterson
So this year I am going to strive to bring to fruition this truth and look with God’s eyes on everyone I meet. For children especially, to look for what God has placed in them that is special and tell them about it so that they will hear the marvelous plan of God for their lives at least in part. What an amazing generation of children we have growing up before us! Let’s help to make them realize the truth about who they are in Christ.
“No recorded cultural system has ever had enough different expectations to match all the children who were born within it.” Margaret Mead
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