million dollar jeans

I was reading my friend Phil's blog this morning about how we often have a misconception that Jesus, and God, come to us in nice clothes with a clean-shaven appearance. The Scriptures do not support this misconception. Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners, people considered 'dirty' by their very natures. Jesus' disciples ate with unwashed hands, so Jesus must have, also, or they would have washed like Jesus.
I think it's good to be reminded of this, and it made me think of my own job. I work as a cashier at Lowe's, so I get to interact with every kind of customer that walks through the doors, and they cover a broad spectrum of people. Some of them come into the store because they have to get things so they can go to work. Some of them come in because they need things to keep up their living spaces. Others come in just because they can, and there are nice, shiny, pretty things they can spend money on. Working in retail is definitely an exercise in studying sociology if you are paying any attention. Most of my favorite customers are the ones coming in because they work in some kind of maintenance or construction and have to buy supplies. These (mostly) guys (with a few women) know me and I know them, some of them I can do their accounts in my sleep, down to phone numbers and PO's. Most of them come in without suits or ties, maybe not dirty but definitely in work clothes (some of them do smell, but that's what happens when you work hard like that). They are nice, friendly, and seem pretty comfortable with who they are even though they probably don't consider themselves anything special. Then I have other customers, contractors and rich people building houses, and some others who come in from local businesses and the local university, who clearly feel they are superior to many of the people around them. They treat me and my coworkers as means to an end, acting as if they think we are clearly less intelligent and less capable than they are. There was a customer one day who was accusing one of my coworkers of ignoring her (except she was on her cell phone and he didn't know she was talking to him) and said that her plane ticket was worth more than a month of his salary. I have other customers, contracters and local big money/big name people who will come in and say 'do you know who I am?' Hate to tell you, but nobody cares, not if that means you are mean and unbearable. You aren't God's gift to creation; that was Jesus, and Jesus certainly wouldn't treat people like that. Another group that I have noticed some degrading treatment from is some of the people that come from the university. Every now and again I get someone from there who is a supervisor of something, or somehow kind of important, and they treat me like I am clearly an idiot because I just work as a cashier, so I must not know anything.
The point, really, of all of this, is that it is important that Jesus hung out with the losers, because that means God didn't forget about us. We don't always know why people are in certain situations, why they dress the way they do, why they might be homeless or out of work, but circumstances do not make a person bad or good. The rain falls on the just and the unjust, and the wind blows where it will, and we cannot make one hair on our head black or grey, so we should probably be a little more reserved in our judgments of others, because we never know when we are going to be judged with the same measure. I mean, look at Jesus.

brokenness

I have been thinking a lot about broken things lately, since my car was hit and had to be repaired. I only got it back a few days ago, and I am noticing, even though it has been repaired and cleaned and polished, it still is not exactly the way it was when it was new. It is not back to the way it was before it was hit. I realize that is the way all things broken are. Nothing that is broken is ever quite the same as before, no matter how good a job the repair was. There will always be a crack, or a quirk, or something that just wasn't there before. Injuries are like that. Serious injuries never heal back to the way they were before. There is always a periodic ache, or some sort of loss of function, or some other imperfection that just is.
Life takes its toll on all of us, leaving us broken or wounded and never quite the same, no matter how much we've healed. We learn to overcome our shortcomings, get around our handicaps, but after we've lived a while we're going to have some scars and reminders of the pain. Little things that never quite work the same, proof that we've lived.
Thankfully, our redemption is not about fixing what is broken but trading old for new. If grace was about fixing what was broken we'd still be not quite right, still wishing maybe we could go back to when everything worked. Instead, we are promised new life, new creation, the old will pass away and the new will take its place. We groan with the whole creation to be clothed in new life, and help each other along in our brokenness until our cracks and scars can be transformed into new life. Amen.