As parents we spend a lot of
time teaching our kids to leave a room better than they found it … as a
mechanism to remind them to clean up after themselves. Funny enough, this week at the office I had
to remind our staff of the same thing.
We have about 70 people in the company now, and if folks don’t clean up
after themselves in the kitchen, or when they leave a meeting in a conference
room and don’t straighten up after themselves, it leaves a mess for the folks
following. It also just demonstrates a
rather disrespectful attitude and a professional sloppiness that I don’t think
has a place in the office environment we’re trying to create.
It’s certainly important to
leave places and things better than you found them, but I think there’s a bit
of a higher order of importance we have as Christians. That’s to leave people better than we
found them. What does that mean?
I stumbled on this concept in
a roundabout way in one of the most inspirational books of the Bible. It came in the midst of some really good
reading … through Song of Songs 3 – 8, Psalms 94 – 100, Esther 5 – 10, Micah 1,
and Jeremiah 1. In particular, reading
the story of Esther brought this to mind.
(Esther’s a terrific book, by the way, and very readable in one sitting
… I encourage you to give it a try)
To recap a little of the
story … Esther became the queen of King Xerxes, who was likely a Persian king
in those days, and who reigned over a very vast area from India to
Ethiopia. He was obviously quite
powerful. Esther became queen in the
place of Queen Vashti, who was banished when she refused to visit the king when
ordered (guys, don’t try to use this on your wives or girlfriends, it won’t
work well!). Shortly after she was
appointed queen, her cousin Mordecai angered one of the king’s most important
aides, Haman, when Mordecai refused to bow down to Haman, which Haman was
forcing folks to do. Haman was so mad
that not only did he order Mordecai’s death, but the death of all Jews
everywhere throughout the kingdom, and Haman got the king to decree that order. That death order was scheduled for a date not
too distant in the future.
Distraught, Mordecai reached
out to his cousin Esther and asked her to plead with the king to save the
Jews. The problem was, not even the king
could reverse his own ruling.
Nonetheless, the king asks Queen Esther how he can bless her and she realizes
she has her opportunity to intercede for her people. She invites the king and Haman to a banquet
she prepares the next day. Then again,
the king asks what he can do for her … she invites them to another
banquet. During that banquet, we see her
selflessness and impact on her people (Esther 8:3-6) …
Then Esther went again before
the king, falling down at his feet and begging him with tears to stop the evil
plot devised by Haman the Agagite against the Jews. Again the king held out the gold scepter
to Esther. So she rose and stood before
him. Esther said, “If it please the
king, and if I have found favor with him, and if he thinks it is right, and if
I am pleasing to him, let there be a decree that reverses the orders of Haman
son of Hammedatha the Agagite, who ordered that Jews throughout all the king’s
provinces should be destroyed. For
how can I endure to see my people and my family slaughtered and destroyed?”
By now you might be saying …
this whole point about deriving from this passage the principal of leaving
people better than you found them really is roundabout. Yeah, perhaps … but perhaps not.
Esther’s actions were both
bold and risky. Essentially, she was
going to ask the king to reverse an order he gave. Not only was that not legally permissible,
but think about it … she’s basically telling the king he made a mistake. Beyond that, she was also confronting Haman
at the same time. But she saw through
that and had the interests of others at heart.
Sure, there was a chance that she too would be killed in the process,
even though she was queen (she was still a Jew, after all), but it’s clear that
she was worried about other people and she had an opportunity to save and serve
them. Her care for them was immense, and
her impact on them cannot be overstated.
We have similar opportunities
… though admittedly not as high-stakes. When
we interact with others, do we leave them better off than we found them? That is, do we have their interests at heart
above our own? Do we look to save and
serve them? Do we interact with an
attitude of care and love?
In every interaction we have
with others, whether short, long, formal or informal, we leave a mark on
them. It could be a negative mark or a
positive mark … but it’s a mark nonetheless.
What if we didn’t take these interactions as innocuous or meaningless,
but recognized that, just as Queen Esther we have an opportunity to impact
people every time we come across them.
How would we approach each interaction if we treated it as truly a life
or death situation?
As Christians, we have a
calling to share the good news of Christ with others. While there is a time and a place for that to
be an overt action to literally share the gospel, I think most times the real
impact we can have is more subtle. Do we
make the faith we profess attractive in the way we interact with people, long
before we tell them about it? Our faith
is a faith fundamentally borne from a perspective of love and sacrifice, so do
we treat others in a loving and sacrificial way?
Besides, I think that sharing
our faith with others has more to do with who we are and how we act than what
we say. In any event, we rarely get the
chance to have a full conversation with others, or to spend the time necessary
to truly help them know who we are and therefore make our faith attractive to
them. All the more critical, therefore,
that we break our impact into smaller pieces, because that’s usually all we
get.
So … let’s challenge
ourselves prayerfully to look to every interaction we go through as crucial. As the last and only chance we might get to
leave the person better off than we found them.
In all likelihood, most of our interactions are the last and only. Let’s be really purposeful … to leave the
people we meet feeling loved, important, cared for. It might be the only time we get to do that,
and perhaps the only time that person might get treated that way. Whether it’s the check-out person at the
supermarket, the stranger in the elevator (you know, that awkwardly silent
interaction when you’re only supposed to silently look forward at nothing), the
person driving in front of you that wants to make a lane change at the last
minute, that annoying person at church you spend most of your time trying NOT
to interact with, that person at work who is never pleasant to speak with …
whoever. No matter what, let’s leave
people better than the way we found them through our (even if brief)
interaction. Maybe, just maybe, we might
save their (spiritual) life through it.
En agape,
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