Toolbox For Faith

I had been traveling for over an hour when I decided to stop and have a Sausage McMuffin at McDonalds. As I stood in line waiting to order, the three people behind me started talking and I could not help but overhear their comments. One man and woman were each wearing an NFL jersey from a team several states away which started the conversation. The other man was from an adjoining state and they talked.

The line was long but the woman behind the counter was almost running to make sure each person received their order as quickly as possible. The store must not have counted on having this many people stop at the same time.

The woman behind me then commented that the line was taking a long time. One of the men then answered, “What do you expect? This is South Carolina.”

That started me thinking about prejudice. For some reason, this man was blaming the slowness on being in South Carolina which showed a definite prejudice.

I learned many important lessons about prejudice as I lived through the civil rights days. My debate partner for several months was one of the first three Afro-American students at the university we attended. I heard his story and saw the hateful reaction of so many people just to having him on campus. The encounter changed forever my feelings about prejudice which can attack in many different ways, even in a McDonalds.

Over the years, I have come to believe that the opposite of prejudice is grace, God’s free gift to all of us. By God’s grace, we are all children of God. Prejudice denies grace because it assumes that some people are better than other people. By living in grace, we realize that all God’s children are important which counters any prejudices that can sneak into our lives.