On a recent trip to Washington, DC, we were surprised by the incredible kindness of those around us. When we would get on the metro, two adults with five kids in tow, we would often have people stop to help us with metro cards, to know which train to board, or to give directions for our destinations. Don’t misunderstand. I’m not saying we’d fumble around until we finally asked someone, and we happened to ask the right person who put up with our ignorance. This wasn’t feigned kindness due to circumstances. These people would stop what they were doing when they saw us and would help us without us ever asking. Once, while our five-year-old tried to press the button for a crosswalk sign, a passerby on a bike let us know the light was not working. We’d often have conversations with people in the metro. Daily, we’d have kind strangers go out of their way to offer help, not criticism, which our big family is used to receiving when in new places. Something about DC made them different.
We thought about this and even asked a few, and they all had the same answer. Nearly everyone in the DC area was a transplant. In the words of one stranger, “We were all new at this once, and we remember what that was like.”
The common bond of unbelonging made everyone reach out to others who didn’t belong and bring them in. This sounds a lot like how Christianity is supposed to work. Peter makes this point. “The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins” (2 Pet 1.9). Notice the “things” mentioned here are “these qualities,” including faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. If we’re missing these things, it’s because we don’t remember from where we came. We don’t recall that we once were sinners. We forget that we were once on the outside of God’s people and we once didn’t belong.
In other words, we forget that we are all the same — hopeless sinners redeemed by grace. We can begin to think that we have earned our place on the metro to heaven. We can become conceited about our worth. We can develop a sense of superiority regarding our righteousness, not remembering the sinfulness from which we were saved.
Nothing stunts maturity more than pride.
We are all transplants on the road to heaven. Remember that Jesus taught in Matthew 7.13-14 that few find the narrow and strait way. This way to heaven was provided to us by God’s design. Paul says in his sermon on Mars Hill that God has put us in our preappointed time and place so that we might seek God (Act 17.26-27). We didn’t find this road by our strength, wisdom, or worth. We found it because God put us where we could find it. We found it because God put people in our lives who would point it out. We found it because of God’s mercy and grace.
None of us were born on the path. None of us deserve what’s at the end of that path. So, none of us should think that the path belongs to us or that we deserve the path more than anyone else.
This should make us more sympathetic to other travelers who happen to fall while walking on this path. We should stop and help them up. It should make us eager to bring others to the path because God brought us to the path (probably by using someone already on the path, and we should pay it forward). We should be more excited about the end of the path because, as transplants, we realize how easy it is to get lost and turned around on this path, which we are still figuring out.
We need to remember all that from which we were saved and appreciate what God has gifted us. Then, remember to stop and help someone new to the path as they travel the new narrow way. It will make all the difference for them and help those of us on the path to earn the right kind of reputation. We are friendly like Jesus. We are all transplants. We are all new at this righteousness thing.
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