Survey

Our love to God is measured by our everyday fellowship with others and the love it displays.  Andrew Murray

I received a survey yesterday.  Companies that do surveys are kind of sticking their neck out.  They are taking the chance that if you are unhappy with their service you will most likely blast them with the reason for your dissatisfaction.

So I received this survey that asks me if I was pleased with the service I received recently when I set up an electricity account.  If you read one of my electricity service devotionals, you know that what I thought should take 30 minutes to set up, in reality took a week. It is those unmet expectations that will get us every time.

One of the things I find interesting about surveys is that they limit the space you are allowed to explain your response.  If you are completing an online survey you are often limited to 100 words.  If you are filling in a mail in survey you are limited to 2 lines.  I don’t know about you, but I am windy so I find it hard to explain a complaint in that amount of space.

I decided to fill out the survey.  I answered question after question and I even had to write on the edge and around other parts of the survey to get my frustration out.  Then came the final statement.  “If you could describe “Our Company” in three words write them below.”  I was stuck.  How do you put into one word or three that you don’t want to be treated like every other customer?  Every person is different and each circumstance is different.  What single or three words describes that?

So after I completed the whole survey, both front and back, and wrote it in ink, I sat back and reread what I wrote.  It was really liberating to get all that off my chest.  Then as will often happen, God popped into my head and said, “Do you really want to send that?”  It was one of those What Would Jesus Do Moments.  I started thinking about the person who would receive the survey.  I put myself in that persons place.  Would I want to hear that I missed the mark?  Then I thought about the customer service person whose hands were tied by the limits to their system which caused a lot of the frustration.   The repercussions of what could happen to this persons pay if I sent in this survey just so I could vent my frustrations.  So I picked up the survey and the envelope to mail it in and I walked down the hall and into our filing room and shredded it. 

Please don’t misunderstand me.  There are times when it is necessary to confront others, but it is also important to remember how to do it.  If it is not done with love then it is wrong.  

What did I learn from this exercise?  I was reminded that God knows I am unique and it doesn’t matter if anyone else acknowledges that or not.  I also was reminded that we all miss the mark.  It also reminded me that if I am unable to approach a stranger, whom I have never met but only talked to on the phone, and show them God’s love, then how can I ever show anyone I meet that God exists. If I want my light to shine so others may see God, everything I do in this life needs to count.  What three words should describe the light I reflect?  God Is Love.  I need to live like that every day.

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I believe yesterday’s exercise in filling out the survey was so important.  You want to refine me and make me better.  Thank You for sending me the memo.  If I understand Your love for me, then I must share it with others.  Thank you for stopping me from sending something that was not beneficial to the other person.          

Scripture: So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. 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 13:31-35