Judged by Our Best Day
Every one of us has one of those days. We get out of bed and after a couple of minutes we wonder why. Then to make the day worse we say something we regret as soon as it comes out of our mouth. Or, we make a decision we instantly regret. It happens sometimes, even to the best of people. The problem is that we usually cannot have these bad days alone. Many times people see us at our worst.
Don’t you wish we could rewind the day and start over? Many of us do wish for that could happen, but know that life is no VCR. One of the good things we have going for us is that no one wrote it down for people to read for centuries.
The Bible is full of bad days. Adam & Eve eating the forbidden fruit has over powered naming animals and being in the perfect place. Sure Noah built an arc, but he got drunk when he disembarked. Abraham is the father of Israel, but yet there was that one day he slept with the maid. Jacob would wrestle with God, but only after he stole the blessing from his brother. Joseph would save the world from a famine, but was a bit of bragger as a kid. Moses delivered the people from Egypt, but just had to go and smack that rock on that one day. Samson would be a great judge, but couldn’t keep his eyes off the ladies. David may have killed a giant, but he couldn’t defeat his own lust. Solomon was so wise he couldn’t get out of his own head. The disciples left everything to follow Jesus and then scattered the night he was arrested. Peter preached a beautiful sermon, only after he denied even knowing who Jesus was. Once he quit trying to destroy all the new churches popping up around him Paul established churches around Europe. You get the idea; the Bible is full of people who had a bad day. We choose the stories we remember about them. We remember the arc, the giant, the Red Sea dividing, destroying a coliseum, singing in the prison and standing before rulers. We let the other stories sort of sit there in the corner.
The real thing is that we all dream of the day that we will be judged not by our worst day, but by our best day. We all wish we did not have a bad day or moment, but we really wish people would let it just sit there in the corner. We run into people all the time that have seen our bad day, and we think we need to duck and run from them. It is hard not to think of bad days when it comes to other people. I mean no gossip circle gets excited over someone being nice or making the wise decision. We live for the bad news about somebody else. We can’t wait to hear it and then pass it on to the next person. Of course, except for us. You see there was a perfectly legitimate reason for my bad day. Do you need an alphabetical or chronological list?
We want everyone to remember us for our good days. It is just our nature. We want that, but how willing are we to give it to others? I want to think that I will always judge others by their best day, but it just sneaks in when I’m not looking. I retell a story, or rehearse a hurt with someone to make someone else look bad.
What if we flip the script? What if we really began to live like Jesus did? Sinners hung out with him and they did not run away. You run away when someone is always bringing up your bad day. Nobody wants to hang out with that person. Instead, Jesus looked past their bad day and realized there was some serious good in them. He picked up the paralyzed, touched the leper, talked to a divorced woman, and helped a prostitute start over. He didn’t hold their bad day against them. Instead, he responded with grace and mercy. Maybe he could because Jesus had seen history of bad days. He understood that if we are human, we will have bad days. He chose to look past them to the heart of the person in question. What if we could do that? What if we could walk in His steps and not judge, question, hurt, malign someone else? How different would the world become around us?
I was thinking I should come up with 8 ways to not judge by a bad day. You know, because, I’m a preacher and I have to give you some action steps. But, we need to be honest. It is simply a stinking, hard, everyday choice. You just have to decide that you will judge everyone by their best days. Accept them by only their good days, just like we want for ourselves.