AMY LARSON
Staff Writer
Over the past few years, I have taken a lot of road trips with friends. I can remember the first trip our group ever took — we started out in Iowa and drove all the way to Florida and back in about ten days. Though I remember many of the places we went and the people we met, I cannot remember most of the individual conversations that took place. There was one, however, that stuck in my mind completely and impacts me even today.
This conversation started because of a simple trip to the gas station. It was just like any other fill-up, and afterwards our group of 17 piled back into our cramped 15-passenger-van and prepared for another long segment of open road. We left the station and drove for quite some time before realizing we had left a boy in the bathroom at Texaco. We immediately turned around and rushed back to pick him up. When we arrived, he was rather angry (understandably so), and though I am certain a million things were running through his mind about how inconsiderate we were, he chose not to reprimand us, but to explain something he had learned from the experience.
“You guys are like so many Christians,” he said. “You know exactly what you’re doing and where you’re going, and you’re so focused on your own destination that you leave everyone else behind.”
The more I considered the words my friend had spoken, the more I saw his sincerity. He was truly hurt by the incident because of the metaphor he saw in it — one of a self-absorbed church with tunnel vision, a group focusing solely on themselves.
Driving down the road that night, we were all silent. I was thinking about many of the experiences I have had at church and how my friend’s words applied. Eventually, I understood just how correct he was.
If Christians truly believe that Jesus is the only way to Heaven, we suggest that we do not care about those around us when we keep tight-lipped about our Savior. God calls us to love one another, but somehow we often confuse that with loving ourselves. Perhaps we are so comfortable with the group of friends we have made that we refuse to welcome a lonely student.
My friend was right — many Christians are too concerned with their own lives to be too bothered with anyone else’s. I can only imagine how much it breaks the heart of God to see so many of His beloved people brushed aside by those who claim to be His followers.
I may be reading far too much into what my friend said that night, but it seems to me that if more people thought as he did, the world would have a totally different view of Christians. Our lifestyle calls for a humility that considers others better than ourselves (Philippians 2:3).
This lifestyle should consistently remind us that, though we have a beautiful and unique part, we are not the sole character in the narrative God is writing. Our love for God should be apparent through our love and sacrifice for others. This is the love that will change us into the people we need to be — people that see things and people as God sees them.
If my friends and I had been showing that sort of love that night at the gas station, we surely would have had more concern for each person, and no one would have been left behind.
I wonder what other situations in my life would have been different.
09-21-2006
