When browsing in Barnes and Noble it may be natural to “judge a book by its cover.” The art design and dust jacket description are created to hook potential readers in the split second before they reach for another title. James, the half-brother of Jesus, cautions us against making hasty assessments of other people based on their appearance, ethnicity, or socio-economic status.
Don’t Play Favorites
When I was a youth minister I took a group of teens to Kings Island theme park. I thought it would be fun to have the age booth employee attempt to guess the age of our prematurely gray senior minister. I even paid for the public humiliation as the worker wrote down his guess of Dennis’ age.
Then came the moment of truth. The employee asked Dennis, “How old are you?” Dennis answered, “34.”
The worker swallowed and said, “Take a prize. I had it backwards.”
As we grow and live by “the royal law,” the externals matter less and less to us.
Are You Color Blind?
We have neighbors who are friends. The husband is black and the wife is white. One day when my younger son Justin was about eight years old, he came back from playing at their house. I asked, “What were you all doing?”
He said that the neighbor kids’ uncle was pitching the baseball to them and they were taking turns having batting practice.
“Was the uncle Solomon’s brother or Adrienne’s brother?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted innocently.
“Well,” I explained, “if he was black, he was Solomon’s brother and if he was white he was Adrienne’s brother.”
You see, Justin is “color blind.” Wouldn’t it be great if all the adults in the world were color blind, too?
“Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.”
