The trendy guy and my failure...

So this week I feel I've well, sort of been a failure. At least at my whole concept and idea of following the Benedictine way of hospitality. It became glaringly obvious to me yesterday as I was at work and asked, due to some staffing shortages for the day, to work on the sales floor. Now, I love people. Some of my best friends are, in fact, people. But, there's something about people and sales and whatever. Plus, let's be honest. We're all filled with pride and judgment at varying degrees and its hard to suppress some of it. So, I'm working the floor and into my section came a couple with a friend of theirs as well. They were all very nice and cool and whatever but... Well, this one guy, the friend, was just too cool. He had the whole look down. He had the trendy shaved head, the upside down horseshoe mustache/gottee with the soul patch, the cool green club jacket with the retro red shirt underneath. He even had the cool jeans with some stripes down the sides and some cut looking things at the bottom. And of course, cool shoes.

Now, all of this in and of itself is not a bad thing. He's entitled to be cool, trendy, chic, hip, or whatever term you like to use. But I guess it just got me to thinking about how obsessed we are with image, with ourselves, with how others perceive us to the point where we forget that the only person whose opinion we should really give a damn about is Jesus'. So, I laid down the judgment on this guy. Oh, not to his face. That would be too rude. No, in my head. So, here I confess. Please forgive me. I long to be hospitable, to truly receive others as Christ, even those who don't share my opinions, my thoughts, my dreams, or even my faith. I long to love them as I love Jesus. I guess the frustrating and humiliating aspect of it all is that when I look at it through that lens, I'm ashamed of how little it seems I really do love Jesus at times.