15 Feet of Gospel

I don't want to share this, but I have to. Keeping with the whole "How does the gospel apply to us as a work place" theme that we've been exploring here in the Sending Center, here's a true story that happened just yesterday.

I had arranged to have a call with an outside organization about a conference that they wanted WHM to come and speak at. On our end I was going to be joined on the phone by someone else from the office. About 5 minutes before the call, I noticed that my co-worker, we'll call him Saul, hadn't come by my office yet. So I went to swing by Saul's office to see if he was ready to go.

As I was walking down the hall, about 5 feet before I got to his office I thought to myself, "He better be here! I went to the trouble of arranging the call and making sure the other organization knew that he was going to be there for it." And as soon as I saw his empty office, I immediately snapped to myself, "Well that's just great. Where is this guy?!"

As I continued to walk down the hall another 5 feet, I noticed the lights on in the conference room and I immediately thought, "Oh Patric.... You sad, small, judgmental legalist. Saul is probably in the conference room right now, attending our morning prayer meeting, praying for our missionaries and maybe even for your meeting. Why do you jump to such conclusions and never seem to think the best of your brother?" It was such a great reminder of how instantly my heart reaches out and judges someone for even the slightest infraction of rules in the "Fifedom of Knaak."

As I approached the conference room, I looked inside without breaking stride and saw that low and behold, Saul wasn't there either. My response, before I had even walked another 5 feet? "I KNEW it! I knew he wasn't in there and that he would be late. This is just like him. He better get here soon or I'm not going to be happy about this. At all."

So in the space of 15 feet I had judged Saul for not being in his office and ready to go, was then convicted of my sin and repented (assuming that he was in the prayer meeting), then sinned again against Saul with my self-righteous attitude as soon as I saw he wasn't in the prayer meeting either. Two rounds of sin and 1 round of repentance in the 10 steps it took me to walk 15 feet down the hallway. My heart turns on dime when it comes to sinning, but when it comes to receiving and resting and relying on the grace of God my heart responds like a semi-truck being pulled by Chihuahua.

And the best part of this... in the 30 seconds that I was gone to see where Saul was, he had called and left a very nice message on my voice mail saying he hadn't forgotten about the call and was on his way up the stairs right then. The call started right on time, with everyone present an accounted for.

I can't help but think that my big brother Jesus had a huge smirk on his face as I was listening to Saul's voice mail. For the Savior of the World, he's got a pretty good sense of humor, and he just loves irony.