I am not naturally a nice person. Sarcasm and judgment have long been the first inclinations of my thoughts.
We all struggle with our words and thoughts from one degree or another.
Being nice, genuinely nice is something I didn’t know I was even capable of sustaining until I was in Haiti this summer with an incredible team who taught me what it means to love unconditionally, to love without judgment, and to watch first impressions be shredded.
They showed me kingdom community.
Since returning home, I have fallen back into old habits, old patterns of being quick-witted, sharp-tongued.
It’s not attractive. It’s not amusing.
But don’t we all abuse our words at someone else’s expense? Isn’t just part of how we communicate?
But I want to challenge you to really think about your identity and the identity of your friends, of the people you pass on the streets, or honk at in the car.
Because each one of us is royal.
…
Let that sink in.
We have an inheritance.
We are Kings and Queens of His Kingdom.
He has called us forth for more.
“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities [indeed one or the other is an eventuality], it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another… all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics.
There are no ordinary people.
You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
-CS Lewis (Of course no post of mine would be complete without at least one CS reference.)
But truly, you have never met a mere mortal. Every person you encounter was made for more. Everyone has a higher worth than they can begin to believe.
But what if we treated one another like the royalty we were born into? What if we were to assume the best of everyone, to trust everyone from the get-go, to believe the highest honor about one another.
We would truly realize that we were standing in the presence of eternal royalty…Not the tabloid plastered scandals kind of royalty, but the old-school bowing before reverent thrones kind of royal.
Wouldn’t our daily interactions look a lot different? I know if I were to truly let the reality of each person’s royalty hit me, then I would find it hard to be passive aggressive or ruthless.
We know that the Spirit of God, the one that raised Christ from the dead, lives in each of us…
But do we really treat each other way all the time?
He lives in you. He lives in me. That declares our worth eternally. It means that every time we say something heartless against someone else, we are saying it about God’s creation. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d be face-to-face with God, and say “Yah, sorry about that. I was sleep-deprived and irritated. That’s all.” It’s absurd to even write!
It leaves us without excuse for our sin-nature. No longer can we claim we were snappy or rude to a friend because of a late night or a morning without coffee. Nowhere in the Bible does it say “The greatest command is to love…except when: hungry, PMSing, exhausted, or annoyed.” There is no exception to when we are called to love.
Seriously. Can you imagine standing before God and saying “Ugh. I’m just too tired to love well right now.”
No.
We would love.
We would stand in awe of His majesty.
And this is how we are called to love our fellow royals.
I was rereading Crazy Love, and one particular challenge hit me like a ton of bricks. We all know the “wedding” verses of 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, where love is all of those wonderful things. We all hear it, and weep at the romance of it all. But that passage is meant to do more than romance us, it is God’s challenge to us–a call to how we are supposed to live our lives.
Christ came in and gave us a new command; a command to love above all else.
No exceptions.
Then that is what we must do.
So. Read this passage. And insert your name everywhere the word “love” is.
Tiffany is patient,
Tiffany is kind.
Tiffany does not envy,
Tiffany does not boast,
Tiffany is not proud.
Tiffany does not dishonor others,
Tiffany is not self-seeking,
Tiffany is not easily angered
Tiffany keeps no record of wrongs.
Tiffany does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.
Tiffany always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
That may be the biggest challenge I’ve ever spoken over myself. But it’s from God. It shows us how to live among royals, among each other.
Call me forth in this. I want to live in my eternal identity, abounding in deeper love with every word I speak and every word I hear spoken.
YOU are not a mere mortal.
YOU are royal.
YOU are made for more.
