As part of an education at Liberty University, each student is required to put in a certain number of hours of community service each semester. Part of my community service is to sit at the local public library each week and take people’s blood pressures. And I happen to wear a white lab coat while doing it. Which apparently qualifies me to answer questions on anything from blood pressure to parenting how-tos. It is incredible to me that simply donning a white lab coat instantly makes one a medical guru.

News flash: they sell white lab coats at Goodwill. I saw them there. So I know. And that means that anybody or his brother or his uncle’s cousin’s monkey could go and purchase a white lab coat for approximately $3.00. (They might charge the monkey more than that for coming in without shirt or shoes).

And people would assume upon the authority of the white lab coat that its occupant was somehow qualified to pass out medical information (or create large chemical explosions…people in white lab coats do that too, I think).

It sort of made me wonder about how much stock I personally put in appearances.

Am I more ready to take advice from the man behind the pulpit simply because he’s there, behind the pulpit, in a suit? Do I respect someone’s opinion more depending on the school he graduated from, the kind of clothes he’s dressed in, or the kind of car he drives?

Do I say I believe in absolute truth and live as though I believe it’s conditional, relative, and situational?

In my friendships, am I partial to those who dress better, talk smarter, and appear to have it all together? Do I look beyond what’s merely skin deep? Do I take the time to know the heart hidden beneath the suit? If not, shame on me. That makes me little different than the medically uneducated who religiously consult quack doctors and drink large amounts of snake oil. Or the Biblically illiterate “Christians” who naively accept as truth anything which proceeds from the pulpit. Or the annoying mosquitoes that refuse to be repelled by bug spray. Wait, maybe not that last one.

But you get the picture.

Christ says in Luke 6:45 that a man speaks “out of the abundance of his heart.” What we say reveals the content of our character, the depth of our thinking, and the motives of our heart.

It’s time to move beyond the immature fascination with the white lab coat and really listen to what people are saying…forget how they look. Is their character good, are their thought processes biblical, and are their motives honorable?

Life is too short to refuse to go deep in our relationships, dealing with the sometimes-ugly realities rather than our comfortable assumptions about people. May we all learn to listen…with our brains turned on and our hearts intensely compassionate.

Solitary Sundays...

This morning I drove to church. Alone. It’s the first time in a good while that I’ve gone to worship the Lord by myself, and somehow, there was something almost painful about the solitude of the car ride. I guess it’s just that I’ve gotten accustomed to the reality of worshiping God in the company of friends. And this morning, when the friends were all busy elsewhere, I suddenly realized how large a part each one of them has come to play in this day that I claim belongs to the Lord alone.

As I drove, listening to the radio playing in the background, and absent-mindedly glancing at the other drivers on the road, I wondered silently to myself why it is that we, as humans, are often times so afraid to face the harsh reality of being alone.

What are we afraid of? I whispered. What am I afraid of? What is it about myself that I’m unable to face in solitude and silence? Am I running? Am I trying to crowd out the voice of conviction? Is God attempting to speak, and am I really listening?

I glanced into my rearview mirror and saw a sporty little blue Corvette preparing to whiz by me on the left. I shook my head.

We live in such a state of frenzy that we don’t allow ourselves time to think…to listen, I thought ruefully.

Over on the right shoulder lay a deer—dead, bloated, swollen with decay under the rays of the October sun.

Maybe that’s what we’re afraid of, I whispered. Afraid of being separated from the pack, of falling victim to our circumstances, of being forgotten, of being insignificant…of being left to rot while life goes on all around us.

It’s true. As humans, we desperately want someone to care. To care about the individual within us, to care about our circumstances, to care about the burdens of our heart, to care about the emotional wounds and the psychological scars…we yearn to encounter someone who loves deeply enough to come alongside us with Christ-like patience and humility, and—upon seeing us lying there in the mud with bloody knees and tear-stained faces—who will have the compassion to reach down, grab our hand, and pull us to our feet again, reassuring us that the race can be won, that the goal is in sight, and that the battle is worth fighting.

As I watched the deer fade into the distance behind my car, I was struck with the realization that if indeed this was what I wanted, then doubtless everyone else wrestles with that same yearning, on some level or another.

I head something whisper, in the back of my mind, that this desire—perhaps the most intimate longing of our hearts—is filled not by seeking out those who will give us attention, but by first seeking the heart of God, and then seeking to meet the needs in the hearts of others...

And so it was that God placed me this morning beside a young woman who was frightened, shy, and alone…a beautiful fragile soul in need of a reassuring smile and some words of encouragement.

I had to laugh about the whole situation as I drove home—alone—after the service. Because God is so much more capable of meeting our real needs than we can even imagine. And He's so faithful to stretch us outside of our comfort zones to show us our weaknesses as well as our strengths...

Hallelujah. What a Saviour.