May 17, 2013

NOT about me!


This morning on my daily walk around the neighborhood, I passed one of the regular dog-walkers. 
This person always moves from the sidewalk to the street when she walks by.  I thought, wow, that's really nice of her to do that, but she doesn't have to - I'm OK with dogs.  So today I told her that I appreciated it but I was OK with sharing the sidewalk.

She responded, "oh, I'm doing this because my dog is old and doesn't see really well.  Sometimes she gets startled if someone gets too close and she didn't see them coming".

So she wasn't doing it for me, had nothing to do with me.  How often we all interpret the actions of a someone else as being "against" us, or "at" us, or directed at us when it is not even remotely related to us!!  We don't ask them what they meant, or think through how silly it could be that it's our fault when a complete stranger is angry toward us.  Instead we go inward, search for something we might have done, and ponder why they did that.  Lots of wasted time and energy, not to mention a loss of peace and joy.

The bottom line is that we often perceive motives behind a person's actions and make a judgment about them, instead of believing the best (love) and leaving the rest to the Lord.  

Judgment and motives, judgment of motives....reminds me of a new rap song I read about recently.  More about that another day :-).

Today's Challenge:  Think of someone who offended you recently.  Is it possible that what they did was not about you at all?