![]() You are on Facebook right now. After reading this, if you scroll on, you'll discover a minefield of information. Some of it will be true, some false. Some will be laced with loving intentions, some to fuel hate and division. Some of it will be deeply researched, some of it will be a republication of something someone read that matched their current outlook on life.
Between Covid-19 and the racial tensions we are experiencing, I'm not sure there's ever been a bigger supply of and demand for information. As part of my own search for information, yesterday I interviewed and recorded a conversation with friends who are in a bi-racial marriage. They have four bi-racial kids. To better understand what is at the root of the hurting in our black community, I wanted to hear their story. I'm not black, so I'm a little lacking in understanding there. I learned a lot in that conversation. I'm anxious to have more of them. But I have to tell you, the main thing I took away from that conversation is this: no information in the world is worth a penny if we aren't willing to engage in other people's lives. And even more - engaging in people's lives that we've previously been uncomfortable engaging in. I think of the biblical story of Jesus "engaging" with a Samaritan woman at a well. Jesus engages with her in spite of the following: She was a woman - a Samaritan woman at that - both of which went against Jewish traditions at the time. Jesus also asked her to bring him a drink of water, when using her cup would have made him ceremonially unclean. Yet there he was. Engaging. They had a long conversation, the longest conversation on record that Jesus ever had with a woman. Jesus taught her. He offered her a lot of information. Most importantly, he talked to her about "living water" - the hope she could find in following him and his teachings. The most remarkable part of this story to me is always the following as told in the 4th chapter of John. Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Keep in mind. This woman had been shunned by those people she went back and told about Jesus. She was meeting Jesus in the middle of the day in the blazing heat for a reason - she wasn't allowed to go with everyone else in the cooler parts of the day. The people in town had no regard or respect for this woman whatsoever. I always wonder - because the bible is clearly short on what that conversation was like when she went back to town. Am I to believe that solely on this woman's words “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” that people suddenly started flocking to see this man? Is it possible that these folks were far more curious about why this man would have any interest in having a conversation with this woman in the first place? Is it possible this woman told them about the Messiah with an overflowing spirit of feeling loved like she hadn't been able to express in years? Is it possible they went there drawn far more out of curiosity of this man's heart than of his mind? I follow Jesus myself. Reading the information I find in the bible is a big reason for that. But the biggest thing I always take away from that information isn't that Jesus offered unlikely information in the bible. Much of it, in terms of guidance on how we should treat each other, is rather common sense. What gets me over and over when I read the information, though, is the unlikely places Jesus always showed up to teach. The hard truth for me many days is I have the information I need to treat people better. That is not the hold up. The hold up is that to put that information to loving use I have to go to some unlikely places. Jesus didn't teach that he had to just "accept" the Samaritan woman in spite of their differences. He taught that he had to go out of his way to engage with her because of those differences. The Samaritan woman would go on to change many lives with her testimony. I'll always believe every time she shared her story about meeting Jesus at the well, her story, with tears in her eyes, started with "in spite of ......., this man showed up in my life." When we know something someone else doesn't know, that can make their minds curious about what we can teach them about life. When we show up in someone's life when and where no one else would, that can make their heart curious about why we would be there engaging with them at all. And that's when we get to show them the answer. Love.
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Robert "Keith" CartwrightI am a friend of God, a dad, a runner who never wins, but is always searching for beauty in the race. Archives
February 2025
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