this is how I’m not like Jesus
I had asked God to help me see the people around me, even at the theme parks, even as we thrilled through the rides and managed the crowds, even waiting in lines and eating carnival-style food on the fly, even sweaty and wet and foot-sore at the end of the day, that I might have compassion and feel His love for them.
Right now, I see the dad riding the train in the back of the car in front of us, the stroller he has hauled on and stowed in the empty space behind the bench where his family sits. I see his baby girl, her hair twisted in ropey braids, how she pulls at strands of her mama’s hair with sticky hands, how intermittently she shoves a thumb in her mouth. I see her mama, how wearily she sighs and offers her husband that weak smile, and briefly I remember our own march through those days, the ways you lay yourself down even though your little ones never know and aren’t really made to comprehend it. I remember how hard you work for those smiles; to be sure the weariness in your body doesn’t overwhelm the memories you want for your children, how your love pours out in a thousand little sacrifices. I wonder if this dad, with his billowing t-shirt and beaten-in sneakers, has tried shoving that stroller on the skyride yet, like another dad we saw, a dad who took deep breaths and pushed and squeezed till trays and clamps popped off just so his young family could ride the sky car through the park.
“Happy Father’s Day,” Kevin had said and smiled, and that young dad had grinned back, taking in our adult-sized kids standing beside us.
We climbed on the train a few stops back because Adam wanted to ride, and this is his trip, in celebration of his graduation. So here we slumped, running tired fingers over the countless coats of glossy enamel paint on the hard steel bench, and have since only been blissful and resting, looking at trees and the ripple of a mossy green pond, noticing the curve of roller coaster rails peeking though the trees. Quiet, Kevin and I have commented only lightly about how thoughtfully they designed the park, him glancing at the map on his phone, trying to decide where we should disembark. Finally, as the conductor muffle-squawks the next stop, the microphone a bit too close, his voice a touch too cheery, Kevin says it’s time.
I look over at Adam, who seems not to realize we all have to climb off on his side of the train.
“Adam, are you ready to go? Are you ready to get off here?” I rise from my seat and gesture toward the safety gate.
“Yes, please get off here,” a woman behind me says.
Instinctively, turn I look back. She lifts a hand to her mouth in mock surprise, says, “Oh, did I just say that out loud?”
The woman beside her –her daughter, maybe—laughs wickedly, her eyes dark and hard and glinting as she makes eye contact with me.
I feel as though I’ve been slapped. Their harshness, the surprise of their mutual derision, stings my cheeks as I turn away, stunned, and climb down the steps to the platform.
“Now, maybe…” I hear the woman say, but I’m too far away to hear any more.
First, I wonder what we did to offend them, sitting on the bench in the train car, just enjoying the ride.
Were we blocking their view somehow? Had we been cause for blindness?
“Did you hear that?” I ask Kevin, my voice low as we wander down a meandering path back into the heart of the park. I glance warily toward Riley and Adam, but both seem happily focused on the walk, oblivious to the slight.
“What?”
“That woman, when I asked Adam if he was ready to get off the train, she said, ‘yes, please get off here,’ as if we were bothering her somehow.”
Do we stink? Could she smell our sweat, our weary hard-trying, our humanity, downwind?
“Hmm,” Kevin says, just that.
“Maybe Adam was lost in his echolalia and that disturbed her, but if he was, I didn’t notice,” I comment, still trying to untangle the why behind senseless meanness. Or maybe he was flicking Riley’s ears, and she was repeatedly responding, “hello, Adam, hello, buddy,” like she does sometimes? This also, I would have tuned out. Sometimes, I forget how weird our normal is to other people.
How many times have I harbored resentment toward someone who is innocently inconveniencing me?
Kevin does not reply, having already moved on to navigating our way to the next ride. “This way,” he says, pointing us down a fork in the path. He’s better at this than I am, doesn’t waste nearly as much of his time trying to decode the attitudes and behaviors of other people.
All around us, people weave through each other, a multitude containing multitudes, carrying bags of every size and weight, dragging down shoulders, weighing down backs. Sweat beads on foreheads and rolls down fingers. Sunglasses slide down noses; hats of every kind—even one looking like the top half of a stuffed lion, cover heads, protection against the summer sun. Mama and Daddy hands grip children of every size, and me, with my exceptional young adults, I look over my shoulder, making sure Adam is close and Riley’s not locked up behind me, in the vise grip of a sudden seizure. Ours don’t want to be held anymore. They’re far too independent and grown, and yet, love keeps me reaching for them, with my eyes, if not my hands.
We slide into line at a water ride, something called Escape from Pompeii, though Adam keeps pronouncing it Pompelli because of the double ‘i’, and I’m still thinking about that woman and her daughter.
This is how I’m not like Jesus. Yet. I move on from wondering what we did to incite such offense to considering what I wish I’d have said or done instead of just walking away. I imagine myself stopping to glare, maybe asking that woman if she’s having a bad day or staring at them uncomfortably, saying something aloud like, wow, and shaking my head for shame. Or maybe I should have said, “You know what? I think we’re not getting off here after all,” or just bluntly asked her, “What is your problem?” The possibilities churn through my imagination. I pick them up and put them down at will, selecting one and then another, until God rescues me.
This is what it is to have the Spirit shepherding: He loves me too much to let me stew in my own ugliness, to let that threatening bitterness take root. God the Father reaches for me, drags me safe, reminds me first that I asked to see the people around me, and does that mean only the people it’s pleasant to notice? Did I not mean the difficult ones, the hurting who hurt those around them? Then He asks me to consider how Christ would have responded, how He did respond to the unreasonable meanness and rejection of other human beings.
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.
As promised, the Spirit stirs the remembrance of His words, reminds me that far from being just a lofty ideal, those words articulate the posture He practiced himself, all the way to the cross.
See them, He urges me. See their captivity and have compassion. Pray for them.
This is how I’m not like Jesus. Yet. I don’t want to pray for those women. I don’t want to see their captivity. I don’t want to have compassion, even though I asked for it. I’m hurt; I want to forget that I was once lost, that I have myself been mean and cruel. In truth, I want to discard the wealth of debt God has forgiven me and go find that woman and her daughter and charge them with the debt they now owe me. I want to knock those women down, not build them up. In my heart, I am as unlike Christ as ever I have been.
But God’s Spirit lives in me, and He insists on grace and mercy, is Himself in this moment crowning me yet again with His love and compassion.
Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. Pray for them.
It is as I begin to pray, standing in the line at Escape from Pompelli, that I recognize my own rescue and make my escape, as one escaping through the flames. Again.
I’m free, He reminds me patiently, free not to harbor bitterness and resentment, free to love, free to have compassion, free to forgive. I don’t have to give as was given to me.
Father, I don’t know a thing about those women, but you do. I don’t know how they’re hurting or what they’ve lost. I don’t know their minds and hearts. I don’t know about their lives, but I can see that they’re held captive by something that makes them hurt-full, and so, empty. Bless them. Bless both of those women today. Rescue them and help me forgive them. Help me walk in the freedom you purchased for me.
It’s not eloquent or complicated, and it feels anything but holy, but I pray, inching forward in a snaking line of jumbled, sweaty, burden-bearing people looking for another whoosh of escape. As I pray, I remember how much hurt God has forgiven me, so much more than one ugly comment, and somehow, I feel a new and swelling compassion for two women caught in darkness. What is it to love those women, I wonder, even though they were so unkind? As I pray, God opens my eyes, touches them with his own fingers, says, this is what it is to see all the people around you. This is what it means to love them as I do.
