Community

Right answers aren’t always the right thing…

I wish we would stop spiritually bypassing when people share what they’re working through. I wish we’d be quicker to listen and slower to speak, and honestly, that we’d stop leading with a quick scripture reference, and a “if you would believe this…”

Maybe people think they’re tossing a lifeline into the situation, but really it feels more like a clump of dirt, and it looks more like a “if you would just get this the way I get this… you’d be out of there quick.”

The irony is that most people are already familiar with the dirt clod that just clobbered their shoulder. They knew that answer, but knowledge doesn’t heal and it doesn’t transform. If it worked that way, we’d all be set by now.

I wish instead we might draw close and just let them know that we’re with them, and that instead of getting some answers they already know, they get us; that we see where they are regardless of what got them there, and that through our relationship they discover they are not alone, and there is someone safe to lean on, to heal with, to transform with.

Even Jesus didn’t dish out answers. He stepped into our broken reality and offered himself. I wonder if we couldn’t stand to be just a bit more like him in this way.