The Room You Walk Into

"...I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism." - Acts 10:34

Most of us are sizing people up before we know we are doing it. A glance, a name, a job title, a way of speaking, and within seconds we have placed the person somewhere on a scale we never intended to use. We catch ourselves at it once in a while. Our voice warms for one person and cools for the next, our questions go deeper for the first and stay polite for the second, and we feel the small adjustment inside us before we have time to choose it. The habit started long ago, and most days it happens without our even noticing.

James, the brother of Jesus, shows us a room we recognize. "For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, 'You sit here in a good place,' while you say to the poor man, 'You stand over there,' or, 'Sit down at my feet,' have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?" James 2:2-4. He is not scolding anyone. He is just naming what the room already does on its own when two visitors walk in and one of them looks like he matters more.

Peter, one of Jesus' closest friends, had been ranking people his whole life. Sorting them by background, by religion, by who counted and who did not. Then God sent him to the house of Cornelius, a Roman officer Peter would have crossed the street to avoid the year before. He walked in, looked around at faces he had been taught to keep at a distance, and said something that sounded like a man waking up. "I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism," Acts 10:34. He did not get there by thinking it through. He got there by walking into a room and looking at the people in it.

Peter's move is one we can make too. The next time you feel that small adjustment starting, you do not have to fight it or push it away. You can stay one beat longer and let yourself see the person in front of you. That is all Peter did. And if the recognition you are feeling right now is real, that may be the first sign something has already started in you. Could it be the wisdom from above the Scriptures call impartial, James 3:17, already at work?

Live it out.

Prayer

Father, quiet the old habit of ranking people inside us. Help us stay one beat longer and see who is in front of us the way You do. Amen.