Workmanship

Workmanship

We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

SOMETIMES SOCIAL MEDIA IS TIRING. People can be rude and even cruel in the way that they talk to one another. The way we think of others changes when we are only willing to engage them in an online platform. We lose our ability to see the person fully, easily forgetting they are the workmanship of God.

It reminds me of years earlier when I worked as a therapist at a Veterans Affairs hospital in my community in their chemical dependency and mental health program. At first when I was assigned a new case, I would pull up the veteran’s chart and go over their history. Often I would see pages of a life lived in chaos and unhealthy patterns. I would make assumptions about the person in my mind, based solely on their record.

And then I would meet the veteran in person to go over their history and reasons for wanting therapy. My perspective of them would often change once we were face-to-face. Because people are more than just a list of diagnoses in a chart. They are more than the history they have, the mistakes they’ve made. In front of me would be a person who was funny or kind, passionate or hardworking. They were more than what I’d simply read on the screen. After a while, I stopped reading their chart prior to meeting them. I knew I would only have a complete picture of the person after seeing them face-to-face.

The same is true of social media. We are not seeing the whole person and make judgments based only on certain aspects of the person. But this shouldn’t be. We are all created by God. We are his workmanship. Made in his image. And although it can be easily dismissed through a screen, when we’re face-to-face, it’s not so easy. We are so much more than the mistakes we’ve made. The missteps we’ve had. And it’s time we stepped back and remembered to see the fullness of another person, the workmanship of God in their life.

Lord, may we see others in their entirety and acknowledge the workmanship you are doing in their lives. Amen.

-Kendra

One Good Step: Who is someone you have judged unfairly? How can you begin to see the workmanship of God in their life?