Last night I was able to crash at The Holiday Inn for my free night via Delta’s overbooking of my original flight. I rolled into the lobby around 3 in the afternoon with nothing to do until my flight at 7 am that next morning. Usually I’m fine with the alone time and a little vegging out, but I just wasn’t feeling it. On my shuttle ride over there, I met Matt who worked for the hotel. Our three minute drive was centered around the fact that both of us were from Alabama but didn’t sound like it. He had spent five years in Canada and had just recently made his way back to the south.
I think my favorite thing about the conversation was trading southern stereotypes that we’ve heard around the world. I’ve heard everything from questions about where my cowboy hat was to how big the tires on my truck were. Matt has gotten similar questions over the years and it always seems to be at the expense of the southern man. The one thing we both thought was interesting though was the fact that even though people worldwide look at the southern accent as uneducated, they also look on it as very trustworthy. I always thought that was interesting.
So after Matt dropped me off in the lobby and got me checked in, I stayed downstairs for a little while. We kept trading stories about “southernisms”, but we eventually ran out and started talking about life. We talked about how and why everyone was responding to Tuscaloosa, and how many people in Alabama even sent a huge bulk of their relief supplies to Joplin earlier this week. It would be easy for Tuscaloosa and northern Alabama to ride this press coverage and take all the help they can get, but they’ve continued to respond and help, even now that other states are “stealing the spotlight”.
Matt started talking about how there must be a little good in everybody, and I asked him if he really believed that. He shot a look at me and immediately defended his statement using the last couple of weeks as an example. I never meant to contradict him, I was just curious if he really had that much faith in people. I honestly have to say that I think I agree with him. There has to be some good in everyone (yes, everyone). The only problem is we allow the world to overshadow it and the good is never allowed to manifest in us.
As a Christian, I believe that we are ALL made in the image of God. Not just Christians. Atheists, Buddists, Agnostics, homosexuals, murderers, liars, adulterers, all of us. We’re all made in the image of God. Unfortunately though, we’re born into this world and our image maker is very rarely seen in the way we live our lives. It often takes a crisis or something to shake up our world for the good to come out. We naturally respond to destruction and devastation with good and I just think that’s interesting. We turn to God when everything else gets rocked because He seems to be the only thing unmoved. Now if only we allowed the good that comes from God to show up a little more often…
