“It is the Holy Spirit’s job to convict, God’s job to judge and my job to love.”
― Billy Graham

Some years back, I saw the iconic movie, Freaky Friday. A lot of you may have seen it, but for those of you who haven’t, it’s about a mom and daughter who don’t see eye to eye. When they go to a Chinese restaurant and read their fortune-cookie-messages, they wake up the next morning as the other person. As they live in each other’s bodies for a while, they learn things about each other that they did not previously know, and find that the other person has a lot more challenges than they would have suspected. Aside from being an awesome chick-flick, I believe that there’s a a lot we can learn from this movie. While it is highly unlike that any of us will ever wake up as someone else, it can be helpful to try to see life through another person’s eyes.

Oftentimes, it’s easy to get caught up in our own lives, and not see what life would look like through a different lens. But, what would it be like to actually take the time to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who is different than you? It can be easy to judge a person based on what we see, but what if we tried to understand people beneath the surface? I’m not saying that we shouldn’t use discretion in who we choose to hang out with, I’m merely saying that when we try to understand another’s life, we’re almost always going to gain compassion from it.

One of the biggest stereotypes of Christians right now is judgmental. I find this very sad, considering that it’s God’s job to judge, not ours. We cannot change the attitude of every person, but we can change our own. What if, every time we are tempted to judge another, we instead looked at their circumstances and tried to understand them. We don’t always have to agree, but we ought to always see people for who they are.

Fearfully and wonderfully made by our Creator. 

Just because someone has a different struggle than we do, doesn’t make them any less of God’s masterpiece. John 3:17 says “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” If Jesus himself did not come to the world to condemn it, than we certainly aren’t in a position to do so. We’re called to love others as He did, which often means taking time to try to understand them and their situations. And, it always means cultivating compassion for our fellow humans created in His image. 🙂