It’s all relative

You’ve probably heard this before.

Before you criticize someone make sure you have walked a mile in their shoes. That way you’re a mile away and you have their shoes.

In all seriousness, it’s easy to criticize someone when you haven’t been where they are.

I heard missionary Rick Martin tell a story about their winter this year. He lives in the Philippines. The tropical climate comes with high temps and high humidity. One morning he woke up to overcast skies, drizzle and a 74 degree temperature. As his wife ran her route to pick people up for church, every family was found huddling around a fire for warmth. They all informed her that they wouldn’t be coming to church that day because of the cold. That same Sunday it was below zero here in Flint.

It is humorous to think that they needed a fire when it was 74 for warmth. But for them 74 felt like our below zero felt to us. It’s all relative.

The temptation is to mock or belittle them for being so weak when the reality is if we had to deal with their sweltering, humid summers or rainy season, our weakness would be readily seen. 

Any given problem can hit us differently on any given day. Forty degrees in October chills the bones while forty degrees in March has us casting off our jackets.

One man put it this way, “Just be good to everyone, because everyone is having a tough time.”

We don’t have to understand another’s pain to show grace to them.