Dear friends, now we are God’s children, and it hasn’t yet appeared what we will be. We know that when he appears we will be like him because we’ll see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves even as he is pure.
1 John 3:2-3 CEB
It has been an exhausting election season with the overwhelming abundance of political ads. I must admit that I stopped watching TV a few days before the election because of all the negative ads. My stress level was elevating. All the negativity, on both sides, was contributing greatly to the divisions and nastiness among us. I was dismayed to see the lengths that people would go in being ugly toward each other.
I saw a video from Neal Forde, who has a YouTube Channel. He was sharing an experience in the late 60’s when he and his father were driving to Oakland in an old beat-up car, when the car died, 9 miles from the nearest town. And this was before cell phones. He says that a young cowboy drives by and offers to give them a ride to get the car fixed. He accepts his offer but tells him that they don’t have any money.
So, he drove them into town and rouses up the local mechanic. They need a new water pump, but it is Sunday, and the auto parts store is closed. But the store manager is a friend of his and gets him to open his store to get the part. Again, his father said that he didn’t have any money. The young cowboy made a proposition for them to help unload some watermelons from his truck and he would call it even.
The mechanic got the water pump installed and they were getting ready to drive away when the cowboy said, “Wait a minute before you. Come over to my home and we can feed you a meal of fried chicken and mashed potatoes, before you get on the road.” Neal said that it was the best meal he ever had.
They finally made it home. Neal got into bed. His father stood at the doorway and said to him, “no matter what you see in the movies or on TV or read in the papers, you listen to me. That’s how people really are. Keep the faith.”
A similar thing happened to me at my first job out of college, living in St. Louis, when my car died out in the middle of a strange neighborhood. And it was dark. It was before I got my first paycheck, and I only had $20 to my name. But I was taken care of by some good people, for which I never got their names.
When we are being torn apart by hostile language and mean behavior, just remember what Scripture tells us who we are deep inside. The core of who we are - children of God. So, keep the faith.
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