glimpses...

this was a post from right after the election of Barack Obama.

The Facebook status. Such a little glimpse of a person. From reading my Facebook status updates, you can pretty quickly gather several things about me.

*I appreciate quippy and well-worded updates
*Fall and Christmas make me quite happy
*I’m a die hard Florida Gators fan and a die hard Braves fan
*I love my family
*Jack Bauer is someone I’m REALLY looking forward to seeing again regularly
*I’m a generally happy individual

What you cannot gather about me from my status updates are all of the things that actually MEAN anything and define me. Why? Because you shouldn’t rely on my status updates to get to know me! If you want to get to know me, it’s going to take some effort on your part...you’re going to need to at least read the “info” section of my page, and if that doesn’t tell you enough, or you’re left wanting more, you’ll have to then contact me and engage in conversation that helps your pencil sketch of me become a full color portrait that accurately reflects me.

The travesty of the last few weeks is that many of us have fallen into the trap of deciding a person’s worth to us and to society by reading status updates.

If some poor unsuspecting soul donated their status to getting out the vote for Obama, some of us make a whole host of assumptions about them, their intelligence and mental clarity, their understanding of the word “change” and their hatred of all things God, Republican, American, military, traditional, family and George W. Bush. Never once do we assume that there is any possibility that they have a well-thought out reason for sending their support Obama’s direction and asking you to do the same.

Conversely, if yet another poor unsuspecting soul donated their status to getting out the vote for McCain, others of us immediately begin our list of assumptions. We automatically assume a Bush-loving, white power/black oppression, love war and want to see more of it, gay-bashing, religious fanatic with an antiquated and out-dated world view and with no concept of the fact that change might be good. Never once do we assume that there is any possibility that they have a well-thought out reason for sending their support McCain’s direction and asking you to do the same.

Glimpses. We take glimpses and we try to paint a portrait. Glimpses tell you nothing. Glimpses should leave you wanting more...that’s why they’re glimpses...they are but a small part of the whole picture.

I have a VERY good friend that I invited over to watch the election results with last night. She voted for one guy for President, I voted for the other. The good thing about this was that I was very glad to have a relationship with someone who shared a different view than I do. It gets pretty stale and gray in the world of “my opinion is the right one and all others are inferior and sub-standard in relation to my greatness and knowledge”. We had exactly one conversation about our different choices for President. Her explanation of her choice was well-thought out, substantial and easy for me to see why she’d feel that way. Mine was well-though out, substantial and easy for her to see why I’d feel that way. We didn’t discuss it again. We exchanged a couple of well-executed sarcastic jabs during the coverage, the new President was elected, and then we went about our business. Why? Because we had more than just glimpses of each other on which to base our relationship.

At the risk of sounding overly spiritual, if there even is such a thing...I’m SO glad that God does not base his acceptance of me on glimpses of me. Because of the amount of time I spend carrying out my will and my purposes for my life, I can imagine that the view is often quite a sub-standard one from His perspective. I’m so glad that He views me through the blood of His Son who died to free me from myself and the destiny I was bound for apart from Him. I’m so glad that He can overlook my emotion-filled responses and my unfiltered words at times and say... “well...that was ugly and uncalled for. But, you are covered by the blood of my Son and nothing can separate you from me. I do not deal with you as your sins deserve.”

What if we dealt with others this same way? What if we looked at our blood-covered brothers and sisters and extended to them the grace for their differing opinions that Christ has extended to us in the face of our hell-deserving sin? What if we looked at those we interact with who are hell-bound and spent our time figuring out how to introduce them to the only Person who can really transform their future outlook, rather than arguing with them about temporal leadership that will appear for a moment and then be gone?

The dictionary defines “sovereign” as “one that exercises supreme, permanent authority.” There is only one Person I know who gets that title. What I also know is that God is not more sovereign than He was yesterday because your candidate won and He is not less sovereign than He was yesterday because your candidate lost. He is, however, sovereignly at work and I would venture that He is much more interested in our responses to the circumstances of our life than He is the circumstances themselves. Am I responding to my circumstances, whatever they are, in the way that brings Him the utmost glory...since that’s what He’s about anyway?

Glimpses. Hopefully our glimpses of God and each other make us want to run to know more. God is worth getting to know...that I know for sure.

And for the love of all...I vote for a return to the meaningless status update and leaving the heavy issues for an actual relationship where human contact is required.

Peace.