Sing Hallelujah, or, the Beauty of a Free Ride

Because of the way humans are wired, we often think backwards. We are always seeing the world through the lens of our own care and salvation. Even those who try mightily to take the ego out of their thought process are doomed to fail. The person we do not see, save when mirrored, is the person who rules our thoughts. Do we even know what we look like when we frown or smirk? Do we have a good read on our own eye roll? What are we showing when our faces turn red and our words turn hateful?

I once thought it would be a nice bonding experience for my husband to take my teen aged daughter to school in the mornings. She was having difficulty with a young man on the bus and wanted away from his attentions. She agreed. Her dad agreed. Problem solved…right? Sigh. I had not considered that one is a morning person and one is not. One sang in the mornings while the other preferred complete silence… dark, brooding, hate-the-world silence.

“Make him stop! He sings! He sings all of the parts of the Hallelujah Chorus! Really! All of them! At the same time!” loving daughter told me, with red-faced emotion and hands outspread.

Since I had my doubts that such an event was even possible—there are no high notes in my husband’s repertoire, and no one sings parts simultaneously—I knew that she was seeing things from her own skewed perspective. She was not seeing her red wrinkled face, nor considering that the alternative was to go back to riding the bus. She gets her lack of morning enjoyment from me and I was not going to drive each morning because some boy had a crush, albeit one that the Dean had to get involved in, banning the young man from being in the same breathing space as my daughter. She had a ride; she needed to make peace with it.

From my viewpoint, they were father and daughter sharing the same space and no matter how I look at it, I do not get in the middle of other parent/child issues. They have to deal with dad. He has their best interests at heart, after all, and the fact that he is verbal in the mornings is hardly a reason to call child protective services. The fact that he can be oblivious is not the question—she had an issue that was not mine to solve.

But no one was really seeing the other person’s view. Not my husband, who was cheerfully taking his daughter to school; not my daughter, who was short-sighted about her real problem being solved; and not me who was holding out against driving to school each day in my robe and slippers.

But that is us. All of us. People who scream at store employees see only their own convenience. They do not see that the person in front of them came in to work to serve them. “Thank you for trying,”is, instead, filthy language that should be reserved for those who will slap us out of our ego trips and make us behave. People who mistreat their family members (truly mistreat, not sing in the a.m.) see only themselves. The child who wants to be loved, who wants a minute of your time, is not seen. The wife that flinches when you speak is not seen. The husband who tried but is now being berated is not seen. The face we do not see, our face, is hidden from us. It’s not a pretty sight. Try it. Look in your mirror and scream some unpleasant words in an angry voice. Like what you see? Yeah, no hair cut or make up makes that look acceptable.

Our actions and reactions are up to us. No one makes you scream at them. No one insists you treat them with disrespect and anger. No one gets you mad. Christians have the concept of grace. Grace is extended by a loving God and our lives must answer that grace with grace for others. Grace for the grocer, the teen serving our sandwich at the drive-thru, the driver who put his trash out the window, and others. All others. Anger must be measured and appropriate. The venting of ourselves must be compared to what God could do if he vented on our person for how we act. If we cannot get a drive-up item without being reasonable, we should quit using drive-ups. If someone parking too close to the line makes anger rise in our chest, we need to quit driving. We need to put down the phone, think about our responses, deal with our issues in therapy, and make the world a better place. If a headline makes you angry, why are you reading the article? Can you affect what is happening? Does your anger serve a purpose or do you just take it with you to vent on the next person you see?

It’s like this. You can see what the world is doing to others. Try to see what it is doing to you. See the person you do not see. Test them. Love them. Forgive them. And then extend grace to others. If you can’t hear the beauty in the Hallelujah Chorus then learn to focus on the beauty of a free ride.