No Freezers In Spain?
No Freezers in Spain?
The very hairs on your head are all numbered.
Matthew 10:30
“Do you have freezers in Spain?” I heard my husband ask Inez, a teenage exchange student who was spending the summer with friends of ours. As she paused, either to collect her thoughts or to make sure she’d heard his strange question correctly, I couldn’t help but interject.
“What?” I found myself squawking from across the kitchen, a bit embarrassed on his behalf. “Why would you ask that?”
“It’s not a dumb question,” he said, defending himself. “A speaker I was listening to talked about how people who live in Europe buy fresh ingredients from the market and don’t typically use freezers.”
Although we gave him a hard time—and Inez clarified that yes, her family does have a freezer—afterward I regretted making him feel bad about it. For as clumsy as his question felt to the rest of us, I was glad that he asked it. Perhaps it was a small question about a little detail of life, but I appreciated his effort to get to know someone whose everyday life is quite different from his own.
All too often when we see people among us who have a different cultural background, religion, or even political perspective, we don’t care enough to show genuine interest in them. We don’t take the time to get to know or understand them for who they are. Instead, we lump them into groups with other people and make generalizations that just might be incorrect.
God knows us so personally and loves us so deeply; we should follow his example in our relationships with others. If God can take the time to count the hairs on our head, surely we can take the time to get to know people beyond a cursory, surface evaluation, regardless of whether or not they own a freezer.
— Today’s Act of Kindness —
Take time to get to know someone who has a background that differs from your own.
From the book
