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2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Our Bible passage today has shown me that when someone has a trouble that I’ve also experienced, I am to use my experience to help them out in any little way I can. I was able to put these verses into action the other night while hanging out at a club to hear a friend play his first one-hour set. He typically plays a three song set on open mic night, but he had steadily been improving and becoming more popular at this club. He was the featured artist one evening and given 45 minutes to dazzle the crowd, which he easily did. Then just last week, he was given one hour to play. I don’t know what happened, but even this artist, who will remain nameless, admitted this wasn’t his best performance.

Honestly, I think his disappointment went a bit deeper than that. I wouldn’t call him a perfectionist, but this musician takes his craft quite seriously. You’ll one day hear him on the radio and have an opportunity to see him on a stage near you. He wants to do his best every time out. After his performance last week, almost everyone I heard speak to him said, “Nice job,” or “Great set.” My friend was dismayed by what he felt was the inauthentic nature of the comments. I tried to console him afterwards with my own stories of performing on a stage, rather badly might I add, and having people tell me afterwards how well I had done.

My performing, if you could call it that, was preaching. In preaching school, we had to go to small rural churches and preach God’s word the best we could, which at times, was not so good. But never did I have rotten vegetables thrown at me, nor did I ever have some tell me straight to my face that I bombed. As I wanted to tell my friend that evening outside the club, “Nobody goes to a show hoping to see a car wreck, nightclub stages aren’t Nascar Racetracks, simple as that.” For some reason, I didn’t say those blatantly poetic words. I probably didn’t think of them till later. But what I hope he realizes and I hope I never forget is that people are nice. They want to see the best in others. People, for the most part, do not want to see others fail, bomb, crash and burn, or whatever adjective you might use when someone simply doesn’t perform their best in any given area. People want to see success. They want to see yours and my attempts at whatever…succeed. That’s a wonderful lesson to learn when we can’t understand why people say we’ve done a good job when we really feel deep in our heart that we haven’t.

Suggested Reading

Being God’s Man by Resisting the World

Authors: Stephen Arterburn, Kenny Luck, Todd Wendorff

96 pages

Waterbrook Press

Rating: Five out of five stars

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