What are you looking at?

Do you have a favorite coffee shop? A couple of years ago I was introduced to the Chattahoochee Coffee Company that sits on the Chattahoochee River. It has become my favorite spot for writing or kicking back with friends over a cappuccino. The scenery is beautiful and it is just a tranquil place.

A friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous because I love her, shared how she and several ladies visited there for coffee and fellowship. They happen to be stellar gardeners, so they were sitting outside discussing the foliage when one of them comments on the huge bird in the trees. They thought he must surely be a hawk. Throughout their time there, they were all amazed how this massive bird never seemed to move.

As they were leaving, they walked over to a young lady by herself and asked if she would take a picture of them. They were chatting away with her as she took their picture when one of them asked her if she’d ever seen anything as magnificent as the hawk in the trees. She looked at them rather oddly for a minute and then she said,

That’s a light fixture.”

Well, you could have heard a pin drop. Dead silence. I’m talking crickets here. They quickly they said their goodbyes, walked to the car and then howled with laughter at themselves.

They all had been looking up in the tree top and felt certain the object they were looking at was a large hawk. They had been talking about it while they were together. Clearly they were mistaken and that young lady is probably still talking about the group of ladies that escaped from somewhere.

My point is, as old as this saying,

Never judge a book by it’s cover.”

John 7:24 puts it this way,

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

The King James version says righteous judgment which is defined as:

…used of him whose way of thinking, feeling, and acting is wholly conformed to the will of God, and who therefore needs no rectification in the heart or life.”

How many of us judge that way? How many of us make a judgment call on our own, without the facts, and then discuss it with our friends, spreading the assumption? If we used righteous judgment as our measuring stick for judgment, it would be amazing how little of it took place in our world.

Before you go forming an opinion of something or someone, take some time to investigate. Get to know the person and understand their situation. It would be most embarrassing if you learned you were in awe of a light fixture instead of a hawk.