I have a new friend at work.
He's the janitor. And he's hilarious.
His level of English is roughly equivalent to my level of very rusty Spanish. For the first few weeks this was obviously a HUGE barrier for our little talks at the end of our shifts. Our conversations mostly consisted of taking turns giving each other the infamous 'deer in the headlight' look.
But one night I randomly answered his question in Spanish.
His eyes got huge.
He thought I was bluffing. And then I said (in Spanish) that I had lived in Guatemala for 4 months so knew some Spanish.
Then he said something I couldn't understand. So then we laughed. And that's how we became friends.
Ever since that night, I've had many more laughs, understood the most (ironically), and learned a bit about his wife and kids. I've decided to try only speak Spanish with him from now on. But this attempt has really just turned into a mess of Spanglish by both of us.
And plenty more laughs.
I'm not one to say too much publically about my political views and how I tie them in with being a Christian, because it all still mostly confuses me and I'm still working through that. But here's my one statement: I don't think Jesus would be holding a sign up to my new friend saying, "You live in America! Speak English!"
I think he would love him wherever he was at instead of reprimanding and ignoring him until he was fluent in his new language.
Sure, I get people's view of this subject on the large-scale. But I'm not going to go there right now. That stuff hurts my brain, especially this late at night.
Yes, I know it will benefit him overall in America to speak fluent English. Yes, I want him to be successful. But right now, on evenings when we are sitting at the gym before we kick everyone out and go our separate ways, my job is to somehow show him the love of Jesus.
So I'm going to speak Spanish with my new friend at work. I've been convicted to put down my conversational advantage and fumble through my own somewhat limited skill to show him that I value him as a person, regardless of his English fluency (or lack thereof). Even if it's only for just 10 minutes.
God puts people in our path every day that he calls us to love in even the smallest of ways, no matter how uncomfortable or awkward it may be.
I need to do a better job of living out this concept with EVERYone I interact with each day. Whether small or big, easy or difficult, convenient or not, love is love. Show it any way you can think of. All the time.
Because that's what Jesus did.
