For the last few years, I have been reading labels on food products. The farther we distance ourselves from food produced on local farms and ranches, the more I want to be aware of what I put in my body. When chemicals are added to food products whose names I cannot properly pronounce, I move on to look for another food source. Most of my shopping happens around the perimeter of the store aisles where food is closer to the hoof and vine than to a chemical laboratory where alien food products are created.
Labels are not limited to food products. We attach labels to people. These labels are not always factual. They can be attached prematurely in the form of judgments about a person based on toxic, unloving, and uninformed interpretations. The longer we allow a label to remain on a person’s life without a redemptive reevaluation and reinterpretation the harder they are to remove.
Reading labels on food products is wise. Reading the label attached to someone and believing the label is always and forever true is not. People are more than the labels people we attach to them. People can change over time inviting new spiritual ingredients into their life that make them a healthy addition to our lives.
Only the Spirit knows what lies within the heart of a person. To know the contents of a person’s heart requires that we look deeper than the surface labels that might cause us to pass them by assuming they are toxic just because the person who created the label said so.
ABSOLUTELY
Great reminder of how easily we do this labeling and stifle others freedom to grow