Sights and Insights
Devotion for Oct. 8, 2024
From the end of the earth I call to you,
when my heart is faint.
Lead me to the rock
that is higher than I,
for you are my refuge,
a strong tower against the enemy. – Psalm 61:2-3 (NRSVUE)
My mother-in-law stayed with us last week. It was a pleasant visit, even though with our busy schedules there was virtually no time all week that all of us were in the house and awake at the same time. My mother-in-law is happy to spend most of the day reading and perhaps take a short walk, so the schedule was not a problem for her. While visiting, though, she wants to feel like she is contributing something, though. Because of this, she insists on emptying the dishwasher and putting the dishes away. I appreciate the help, to be sure. Yet it is also assistance that I have had to learn how to accept over the years (and now decades).
In organizing the cabinets in my kitchen, I have three shelves for beverage vessels. One shelf is for plastic cups, another is for glass – glass cups, wine glasses, and so forth. The third is for ceramics, which mostly means mugs for hot tea and coffee. To me this division makes perfect sense. Three shelves for three different types of drink containers for different functions. Yet it is truly mystifying for my mother-in-law. She has one shelf in her house for anything you drink out of – mugs, wine glasses, cups, whatever. When she puts our dishes away, mugs end up with the wine glasses and plastic cups are comingled with glass ones. In the early years, I would try to explain the difference and my frustration at bay at not being able to find what I was looking for in the cabinet. I have come to accept, though, that the categories and organization that seems so obvious to me makes no sense to her. To appreciate her help includes not just being thankful but also accepting the way her mind works. If I see something in a different place from where I’d like it to be, it is up to me to move it when I notice it. It is not helpful for me to assume that she can think the way I think and make the same distinctions and categories that I make.
The insight that the way we see the world is not the only way it can be viewed is central to cultural sensitivity. There are many ways to perceive and organize our understanding of the world around us. Just because something seems obvious to me does not mean that it is the one and only right way to understand it. It is much like the reality that most indigenous languages from peoples in rainforests do not have a concept of the color “green.” They have words for blue, but green is generally not recognized as a separate color, even though as English speakers we would say that they live in a place with thousands of shades of green. This is true of the peoples in the Borneo rainforest in Asia and the Amazon in South America. It is a different worldview. It also is part of generational differences within a culture over what is important and right and good.
There is religious significance to the realization that there are different ways to categorize the world around us. Christians in different parts of the world emphasize different parts of the biblical witness to God at work in the world. It also explains some of the differences between denominations. Different Christians are attuned to different ways of understanding God with us. Even different styles of worship are a matter of dividing the function and practice of worship in different ways. With all of these differences, we can either insist that our perception is the only acceptable way, or we can recognize that there are different ways of understanding reality and God’s presence within that reality. To be open and thankful to God, I think, we must learn to appreciate the different ways of thinking and organizing that different people have without dismissing the faithfulness behind those ways of thinking. Appreciating and accepting these differences might even allow us to have a broader experience of who God is for us.