Stupid Idiot?
"You are a stupid idiot! Who taught you how to park?"
It was a pencil scrawled love letter, tucked beneath my windshield wiper.
Sheepishly, I looked around the parking lot as I finished the note from "Mr. Anonymous"
O.K. -- I admit, my GMC had crossed over into the parking space next door. Still, I did it because the guy next to me was double parked as well. It was the only way I could fit in.
And now, the poisoned pencil strikes.
"Stupid Idiot?" Me? It wasn't my fault! How dare he?" I began to fume.
"What kind of stupid idiot would write an anonymous letter calling me a stupid idiot?"
Then it dawned on me -- something I heard my friend, Pam Peterson, say a long time ago: "Hurting people hurt people."
It must be a seething, boiling, cauldron of pain that erupts in a nasty note like this.
A certain melancholy shadowed my heart, as I pondered what kind of difficulties and struggles my "stupid idiot" friend must be enduring. "He's just lashing out," I told myself, "He doesn't really mean it."
Then, I pictured what I supposed he really meant when he wrote that nasty letter to me.
Instead of "stupid idiot", he meant to write --
"Help! Help! I'm hurting really bad on the inside, and I don't know how to deal with it. Please pray for me!"
I'm sure that's what he meant -- but it just came out a different way!
So -- I prayed for him, and drove away whistling merrily.
It was a pencil scrawled love letter, tucked beneath my windshield wiper.
Sheepishly, I looked around the parking lot as I finished the note from "Mr. Anonymous"
O.K. -- I admit, my GMC had crossed over into the parking space next door. Still, I did it because the guy next to me was double parked as well. It was the only way I could fit in.
And now, the poisoned pencil strikes.
"Stupid Idiot?" Me? It wasn't my fault! How dare he?" I began to fume.
"What kind of stupid idiot would write an anonymous letter calling me a stupid idiot?"
Then it dawned on me -- something I heard my friend, Pam Peterson, say a long time ago: "Hurting people hurt people."
It must be a seething, boiling, cauldron of pain that erupts in a nasty note like this.
A certain melancholy shadowed my heart, as I pondered what kind of difficulties and struggles my "stupid idiot" friend must be enduring. "He's just lashing out," I told myself, "He doesn't really mean it."
Then, I pictured what I supposed he really meant when he wrote that nasty letter to me.
Instead of "stupid idiot", he meant to write --
"Help! Help! I'm hurting really bad on the inside, and I don't know how to deal with it. Please pray for me!"
I'm sure that's what he meant -- but it just came out a different way!
So -- I prayed for him, and drove away whistling merrily.
How many of these people sit in our congregations, sit on our church boards or even stand behind our pulpits. People that are hurting with no one to share the pain with. Fears and heartaches. Pain and uncertainty. May God send us to the hurting that we might share in their pain and thereby lighten the load that they bear.
ReplyDeleteA familiar story these days - and one that opens doors for us in preaching to our people about the hurts that plague our culture. Thanks, Mark.
ReplyDelete