Have you ever, as you were going up and down the grocery store aisle, run into the same person over and over again? That’s what happened to me that day. I kept having to excuse myself for needing to reach in front of the same person who, to put it kindly, was acting entitled. I wasn’t doing it on purpose but she seemed bent on having an attitude with me.
After my adventure of playing dodge-the-woman I bought my groceries and went back to my humble red van and I noticed the entitledlady was parked in the spot right next to me and was getting into a Jaguar… a very cool looking car right? I also noticed that she was having an attitude with the man she was with and he was trying to get the hood of the car opened, I wondered if he even knew what he was looking for! I thought this would be a chance to do good for evil so I got out and asked if I could be of assistance in case they needed a jump-start for the battery. She drew herself up into a very haughty stance and announced loudly “No, I’m good!” I got back into my van which cranked the first time I turned the key, backed out and left her standing there holding her pride and the poor man hostage.
I wondered how her day would turn out.
Proverbs 6:16-19 “These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren.”
Did anyone besides me notice that the very first thing listed in that list of God’s most un-favorite things was a proud look?
My attitude towards someone like that is one of the things I have to ask forgiveness for when I say my prayers. I don’t even know how to describe the ire it raises in me. Everything in me rebels and I would love to hold a mirror up in front of their raised chin and nose held high in the air! My best hope would be that they would see spinach stuck in one of their teeth or some bodily fluid hanging from their nostril! Now isn’t that a very sweet and Christ-like image for you of myself?
I’m only telling the truth here.
Now let me ask you this…
who is worse, the lady who treated me so rudely
or
me for resenting her so much?
Did I want to do it because I wanted to do good for evil
or
did I just want the pleasure of showing her that this insect of a person could actually do her some good or that somehow my Plymouth van was superior to her Jaguar because at least it started!
I will tell you the honest truth; my thought as I pulled away was “a living dog is more powerful than a dead lion.”
Here is what I know, God loves us all the same, big and small, rich and poor, what ever the color of our skin, eyes or hair, He created us all in His image and the Bible tells me that God is love…
So tomorrow is another day and Lamentation 3:22-24 “GOD’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great your faithfulness! I’m sticking with GOD (I say it over and over). He’s all I’ve got left.”
He still loves me yes He really does!
Harolene.com 
I just posted this thought that coincides with your post — to one of our groups in Philippines:
“…a thought from the original Amplified Translation In Proverbs 6:16-19…
“These six things the Lord hates, indeed, seven are an abomination to Him: A proud look [the spirit that makes one overestimate himself and underestimate others], a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood…” Proverbs 6:16-17 AMPC
The idea of “overestimating myself and underestimating others” … is powerful.
The KJV translates this first deadly sin as “a proud look.”
Amplified gives this wonderful insight.
How do I perceive others? Do I think I know more than they do?
Check your heart. Cultivate a teachable spirit. The Bible instructs us to “humble yourself.” Truly doing that is so rewarding!
Others may belittle you with their superior knowledge and experience.
But only YOU can genuinely “humble yourself.”
Compare with 2Chronicles 7:14 where “humble yourself” is also mentioned in God’s formula for REVIVAL.
More on that later….
Great is the Lord over all of our lives! Have a blessed and powerful day!!
Love and every blessing!
🔥🕊📖✝️🔥”
Bless you Harolene! Always love your posts! ~Phil Freeman
Sent from my iPhone
>
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Wait a minute.
Did I miss something?
This lady with the nasty entitlement who dissed you several times in the store was broke down in the space next to your car when you set out to leave. You offered help. She turned you down with her snooty way.
And you ask God to forgive you for this?
I get it. You felt the dis. But you returned the evil with kindness. Right?
Did you hit her with a nasty comment or something?
I didn’t read that part.
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No, I didn’t say anything at all except when she said, No I’m good, I said, OK. The man looked like he could have strangled her ha ha. I felt sorry for him. I just felt bad that it raised such a horrible feeling in me!
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I am an old “metal head.”
I don’t display that feature about myself much on the blog, and the older I get, the less meaningful that part of my life seems to me – generally. But when I was young, it was a major feature of my life and in influenced my look, my sense of style quite a lot. I have half a dozen stories either about that or based on it, and yours makes me think of one of them.
When I went to Bible school at ACU, Abilene Texas, I had a beard and a pony tail, and on any given Tuesday or Thursday (random) afternoon, I might be wearing my Van Halen or Metallica Tee shirt. This didn’t make me all that unique, really, but there are some conservative circles I was occasionally connected to where it was unique and even a bit troubling to some on some occasions. I think you get the idea.
Several times in my life, I faced the judge-a-book-by-its-cover phenom. I came to have quite a lot of patience with it, actually since I knew that I had made personal choices which called this out of people – sometimes unsuspecting/unprepared to handle it well. But there were a few times when the phenom got pushed to extremes too, though.
So, as I was a student there at ACU, I became friendly with my next door neighbor lady who was an elderly widow having been the wife of a missionary overseas for many years. She was VERY CONSERVATIVE, to put it mildly. UPTIGHT is a better description. But I had made myself helpful to her many times through those years, and she came to rely on me for most of her yard care. She insisted on paying me, even when I insisted on not. We went back and forth on that, but I caved first, and she gave me… oh, I don’t recall now… maybe $20 each time I moved and did other lawn work. I am sure my pay was below the market value, even if not by much. But it is important to my story that you understand that I insisted on doing it free and only caved after she insisted she pay and this went back and forth three times or there abouts. Point being, even though she is my only witness, you would have to be nuts to accuse me of taking advantage of her.
She had a strange last name, so I will not use it here to protect her identity, but I also want to say that even though she always seemed a bit cool with me and maybe a bit suspicious (I never felt the warmth), she did come to rely on my and we treated each other with respect and care. This went on for about two years. In fact, she even left town for extended vacation and trusted me to handle things while she was gone. I never knew if she had someone to watch over me or not, but if she did, then she found that I lived up to my word.
But then one day a strange older man was there when I showed up at the appointed hour to work. He was not as old as her, but old enough to be my father for sure. I just went straight to work that day. I did not knock on the door, but as was my custom, at the appointed time, I just went into her shed and retrieved the equipment I needed to do the work. I was about half way through mowing the front yard when the man stepped out of the house and flagged me down. He met me there in the grass and greeted me with a stern attitude.
Actually, I didn’t quite catch his drift at first. I was slow on the uptake. I had this routine which was well established and this trust with the lady, so when he told me he was her son visiting from Dallas, at first I thought he was just being overly formal and conservative like her. But before he was done, he got more and more stern, and just short of accusing me, he told me about how the airconditioner repair guys took advantage of this little old lady last year, and the auto mechanic tried it too and someone else too and his dear, old mother is vulnerable (which was true enough) and all that, but by the time he was done, I finally caught on. He was putting me on notice. He didn’t trust me. Didn’t like me. Was barely tolerating me mowing his mother’s yard.
When he finished, he went back insight and I fired up the mower and kept mowing. But as I made another round and then yet another, that little encounter just began sinking like lead into my gut. Pretty soon, it was all I could do to continue the job to completion. I felt the urge to go knock on the door and give this idiot a piece of my mind. I had been doing this job for his mother for TWO YEARS, and in all that time where was this concerned son??? I had insisted on doing it for free! His own mother could attest to it – let’s go ask! You are looking a gift horse in the mouth – brutha-man!!!
Not sure why I didn’t. I am capable of that. But I tend not to take such stands just for my own honor. And I figured he would be gone soon. If he ever returned and tried it again, we would probably have to come to terms, but maybe that was just gonna be the last of it. In fact, maybe his mama was hearing about it and giving him the what-for! Maybe.
Odds are, I would never know it if she did.
And I don’t.
BUT…
Divine irony or poetic justice or karma… whatever you wanna call it… had other plans.
It was another year and a half later when I took an internship in the local prison. There is soooooooooooooooo much about that I could tell, but I need to stay with THIS story in particular or else you will have to buy the book. However, one small detail which is part of quite a wild OTHER story in itself, is that when I took the job at the prison, I got a haircut AND never work a metal head tee shirt on the job. But to make a long story sorta short, one day my supervisor came in and said that we had got a new inmate over in closed custody the week before who was a graduate of Harding University (a sister school to ACU). In fact, Harding might be considered more conservative that ACU, and graduates from there generally are.
My supervisor was a fellow alum, so he was curious and wanted to meet this guy. I said I would tag along. What is his name?
It was that same strange last name as my neighbor lady.
Amazingly, I never suspected a direct relation. And when we got time late in the day to break away and head over to closed custody to check on the guy, I just was slow on the uptake again. I did not recognize the guy. Not at first. In fact, it wasn’t until we were walking away that I put it together. And of course my appearance was totally different on this second meeting. We literally had a five minute history from a year and a half previous, so I would not expect it of him, but what was MY EXCUSE?
What can I say?
Of course the man claimed he was wrongfully convicted, AND I HAVE TO SAY… that does happen to people sometimes! I learned working in prison not to judge. But of course, this brother wanted us to know he was not in fact a child molester and had not hurt his own grand daughter despite what other family members and the DA said.
Well, we met again the next day, and I still did not reveal myself to him, but I did determine officially that his mother was my next door neighbor AND this meant that I would be able to tell her that I had seen him, that I personally knew he was “okay.” (If you are a mom of an inmate, you know how important that access can be!). So I did. And as you can imagine, suddenly the old lady got WARM with me. I was in a position to see her boy almost daily and could transmit messages and give my assessment of his well-being. I suddenly had new value to her she never would have imagined.
It took a couple of weeks before he figured out who I was. He had not forgot me, but just had not realized I was the guy he so deeply offended in his mother’s front yard so long ago. And of course, I never showed him anything but respect and kindness – despite feeling offended at one point early on.
By this time, NOT MAKING JUDGMENT about his guilt or innocence at all, all I can say is that I would NOT have WISHED THIS on the man – not for the offense he committed with me! And now there was this shame and stigma that he bore! He was not the book the cover suggested! Ha!
And when he finally put it together who I was??? He made a special appointment to come to the chapel office one afternoon to apologize.
Wow!
Except that his apology wasn’t much of an apology.
He actually told me he could see that I had changed!
I don’t think he really meant to say it like that, but I think he was just that kind of an uptight person. I think he thought he was apologizing, but really he was congratulating me for growing up and changing into a good guy from the jerk I had been when I was cutting his mom’s grass all those years!
Wow!
I let it go then too.
But I still felt it.
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Your inner child wanted to say “na na nan na na”😉 (in a sing-song way). Great story, thank you for sharing it ‼️😇
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Thought-provoking.
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