Bumper Stickers and Such  

Assumptions are the termites of relationships. ~Henry Winkler

I am beginning to think I spend too much time on the road.  I was driving home this week and when you stop at a lot of red lights on the way home you have plenty of time to observe what other people stick on their vehicles. 

I have never been a bumper sticker person.  My thought has always been what happens when I decide to sell my car.  Will someone else want all the declarations that I pasted on my car? 

Anyway, I get behind this truck and I start reading the stickers on the windows, bumper and tailgate.  You can tell a lot about a driver by what they stick on their car.  From observing the stickers this guy was a United States Marine, the sticker with USMC on it told me that along with the marine sticker.  He was also a deer hunter, hence the sticker with a deer head on it.  He had a license plate frame with skulls all around it. I really don’t want to know what that means.  There was an Ole Miss sticker and a sticker of the state of Mississippi with Sycamores on it.  I am guessing that there is a school in Mississippi with a Sycamore Mascot, the fighting trees.  At another light I saw another truck that was jacked up high and had one of the new black and white Texas license plates.  I am not sure if this was a vanity plate or just the letters the state picked for this guy but it read XXLDDS.  I am thinking he is an extra, extra, large dentist but I don’t think I will ask him. 

All of this started me thinking. We make a lot of assumptions about people and each other just by appearances and even the bumper stickers on cars.  It always seems to surprise us when we really get to know people.  Many times the assumptions we made along the way are not what the person is all about.  I think God created us for relationship with each other.  We can’t be in relationship with each other if we are making the wrong assumptions about them.  For all I know the guy driving the truck with all the stickers may have borrowed the vehicle from his son.  Why do we assume we know something about someone just by looking at the external without getting to know the internal?  How many times do we assume the person we work with didn’t speak to us because they don’t like us, or are mad at us or have something against us?

One of the nicest and sweetest people I work with didn’t speak to me when I first started working at my new job.  Later I found out that she was working partial days because her husband is gravely ill.   Sometimes God decides to give us a sucker punch just when we need it.  
        
Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I often make assumptions about people just by looking at them. Please help me to see the person You created.  Help me to see the heart and character of the person and not make assumptions based on the external.  The majority of the time my assumptions are wrong and how can I love that person as You do if I don’t set my assumptions aside.  Thank You for Your everlasting love for me a sinner and show me how to love others unconditionally.    
       
Scripture:  Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come,’ so now I say to you.  A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:33-36