I shared a bit of this on yesterday and I need to share it again. See, as we were riding home from worship, I was looking at the many houses we passed and some were well maintained and looked as if they are being kept up. Then God says to me, “looks can be deceiving.” It was a wow moment because a lot of us are walk around looking kept up and our outsides well maintained but inwardly, we’re a raggedy mess. Yea, you know it’s true. We walk around with a mask on our beat faces, well maintained haircuts and styles, our groomed clothes and manicured fingers/toes when a lot of us are a tear away from crumbling. And we’ve gotten so good at it that now when folk look at you, they judge your outer persona because that’s what they see. You know good and well, when you look at a person, you tend to think you know them based on what you see, when in actuality, it’s the farthest from truth.
See, you see her as angry but she could be in pain from being knocked around by the husband who promised to honor, cherish and love her until death do they part and now anger has overshadowed her ability to smile. Or she could be in pain from chemo or dialysis and angry because she’s tried and can’t understand, why her. Or she could be angry because there’s a tormenting spirit vexing her spirit and the more she prays, the worse it gets. – You don’t know. You keep telling him he needs to grow up and act like a man but what you don’t know is, no one has ever taught him how to be one. No! You didn’t see the hell of a childhood he had to endure and neither do you understand why his self-esteem is so low. Maybe it’s because his momma kept telling him, he’ll be worthless like his daddy instead of loving him or because no one has ever looked at him and said you’re worth more yet he thought when you came into his life, you’d be his favor but instead you fell into the same trap of being foolish too. Stop looking at a child and automatically assuming he/she is ‘another one’ when what you don’t see is the fact she/he has to take care of brothers and sisters after school with barely time to do his/her homework. Stop treating every child, who acts out, as a statistic waiting to happen when it could be they are too afraid to go home to the uncle who is molesting them. Stop acting like it’s not your problem when it could be you next who needs help. The point is … Stop judging what you see when most times you only see the side they have the strength to show because they know you couldn’t handle the other side.
“Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.” – John 7:24
Lakisha, the Author 