This weekend was great for riding my bike, so I made it a point to ride as many places as I could. It turned out there was more than just exercise I would get out of my rides.
As I pulled my bike up to a large business on Saturday, I realized that I'd have to walk right through the employee break area where workers took their lunch and smoke breaks in order to get to the bike rack. At that moment, there were 10 or so crowded around 2 tables. Conversations were centered around discontent and malice toward supervisors, disliked co-workers, the "system," and rude customers, and ways to cut corners in the work environment. There were quite a few cigarettes burning, and I caught a couple sneers as I intruded with my bike toward the rack.
To be clear, I'm not complaining about or labeling the group I encountered. I paint this picture to explain the situation better. There I was on a leisure day off, riding my bike for exercise and enjoyment, pushing myself not to drive--with no (major) worries about family needs, overdue bills, or unrelenting supervisors--strolling through a circle of hard workers with hard lives, who may not ever have the ability to dedicate a significant part of their off-days on exercise, leisure, and recreation. Simply put, we clearly represented, at least on the surface, two vastly differing groups in that moment.
I walked into the store shrugging my heart. There's little that can be done quickly to disrupt those stereotypes and tear down those walls in those moments.
But, as I returned to my bike to leave, I was immersed in a conversation that began the quick work of traversing lines of separation. I was able to go around the back of the circle this time to unlock my bike and strap my helmet on. Two young men were teasing a woman about still acting like a little kid all the time on account of her story of being distracted most of her workday by a juvenile event taking place outside of the store.
Quickly, the lives around that circle began to emerge as the girl replied, "Yeah, but I never really got a childhood. I had to raise me and my sister when I was real young. So I guess I'm trying to get my childhood now." Another, who had not been teasing the girl earlier agreed, "Yeah. Same for me. I hated my home, and my step-dad hated me. But what do you do? You want to leave. But where you going to go? You just raise yourself and get out--say see ya!"
In Luke's gospel (6:32), Jesus asks "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them." This falls directly in line with the 2nd part of the greatest commandment to love our neighbors, and Jesus' insistence that we love our enemies.
It's easy to look at those who are different from us, identify all of their faults in the blink of an eye, and build barriers of dislike up against them. But it's not what we're called to do.
Instead, we are called to love those around us, those different from us. After all, it won't be but a heartbeat after our first blink and appraisal that we begin to see who we and those around us really are. Underneath the things that make us ugly always lie the things that make us human, beautiful, and more similar than we first imagine.
Let us be called to love!
More to come!
Jason <><
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