June 04, 2013
Likability
In giving her report
on the local Prison Ministry, Ms. Clair congratulated our small congregation on
supplying 100 dozen homemade cookies for the ministry’s yearly retreat. She
went on to explain that at the end of the retreat each participating inmate was
given a small bag of cookies and they were instructed to give them to someone
they disliked. The implications of this unique lesson were formulating in my
mind when she continued, “The majority of
the bagged cookies were give to a prison guard that most of the inmates don’t
like.” I have to wonder if I would have had the same courage displayed by
these men if I were asked to do something similar in the work place, the church
environment, or in social circles. “But I
tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”
(Luke 6:27-28 NIV)
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----Certainly the fact that only one guard received the predominance of the cookies testifies to his unlikability. But from another perspective, even being the more unlikable of all the guards, I wonder if he were truly the most unlikable of all the folks within that jail system, guards and inmates alike. Guards are constrained greatly in the ways they can deal with prisoners. Prisoners, on the other hand, have or can make much more latitude for retribution. Now, I’m not really sure how many folks would seek retribution for having been given a bag of cookies, but it must be acknowledged that a very sincere and negative statement is actually the giving of those cookies.
-----That would bode danger to me in a jail full of criminals. But if I were an inmate there, neither would I have given this bag of cookies to a guard to avoid danger from an inmate. Thankfully, there are not many people around me I dislike and admire less than myself. And maybe in that light it would also appear to everyone else as quite fitting when I would have just sat down on the floor and given those cookies to myself.
-----But fitting is fitting and true is true. I smell far more of my own stench because I have to live with it 24-7. I smell other's stench for only the moment they are around me. And I have to experience myself to whatever depths I choose to investigate. There is a lot of good there, but what I know of myself is far more than what I know of anyone else. And like everyone, a lot of it isn‘t so good, either. Yet, knowing this, if I were to judge anyone else’s bad to amass to more than mine, I would have to judge it so by conjecture. And don’t be thinking I’d give away any bag of cookies based on conjecture alone!
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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