Last week as we were road-tripping to Colorado we stopped for gas and I choose gas stations very poorly. If you pulled up so the gas pump was next to your tank, the station didn’t have enough room between the front of your car and the end of the parking lot for anyone to your right to leave. (Click the pic to go to google street view.) As I was waiting in line, the guy in front of me waved at me to ask me to back up so he could back out and exit the station. Once it was my turn to get gas I carefully didn’t pull all the way forward and then noticed that it also pumped rather slowly.
Finally, I had a full tank and needed to leave. But there was someone else who hadn’t noticed the lack of room and so I was stuck with someone behind me. I decided to go ask the person behind me to back up, instead of just waving, thinking it was more polite. My mistake. A very cranky old lady yelled at me, said she wasn’t backing up, that I needed to pull forward, and to hurry up because she was running out of gas. In that moment I decided that the thing to do, as a Christian, was to pull forward, even if it meant I’d just be sitting in limbo between pumps waiting for the next car ahead to fill up (with slow pumps remember). After the cranky old lady got done, she walked towards the person blocking me in & yelled at her for pulling too far forward.
Over the last week, as I’ve thought about this scenario, many times I’ve thought – I wouldn’t do that again. I’d tell that stupid lady if she won’t back up to let me out, I won’t pull forward. After all, why should I start my car and move 10ft & sit there wasting gas?
Then Rodney preached his sermon on the second half of Matthew 12:28-34 – on loving others. In it he reminded us we have to love people who are like us, who are unlike us, who dislike us, and who hate us. There’s no line we can draw between loving lovable people and not loving unlovable people. That lady was totally unlovable.
So, the thing about all this that’s been troubling me since Sunday is – how can I actually find joy in meeting her needs with all the energy and creativity that I’d use to meet my own? How come I didn’t and I just got more bitter about the situation over time?