The Heart

     Over the last couple days God has been speaking to me about people who have made a positive impact on my life.  When I look at each of them I see one common theme in the way they see others.  As Jesus does, they look at the heart.  Many good people do bad things, but it doesn't make them bad people.  Hurting people hurt people.  People forget what you do, but don't forget how you made them feel.
     I keep thinking about my son when he was about ten years old.  There was a boy at school who beat him up all the time.  He would come home with torn clothes, a sad face, and a broken heart.  We spent hours trying to figure out what he was doing to make this boy so angry at him.  I suggested several ideas and he would go to school with a new hope and come home defeated.  Then one day as I was thinking about it, I realized, this kid was hurting.  He was a bully like I had been a bully and he was taking his pain out on my son.  When I suggested he tell the boy that he was going to like him, even if he beat him up, my son looked at me like I had lost my mind.  I asked him to point out something positive about the bully and focus on it.    He left for school the next day without hope and I wondered if he would even try.
     Again my son came home battered, but he was smiling.  "Mom, me and Andy are friends now.  I told him I liked him and I was going to be his friend even if he beat me up and he beat me up again, but then he said we are friends and we played the rest of the recess."
     I have to admit I wasn't as positive about it as he was.  I wondered if the beatings would become a ritual that happened before they could play.  It wasn't.  He actually became very protective of my son.