Court

I had to go to court this week.

Naturally, I didn't do my preparation beforehand and ended up getting hopelesly lost and muddled up on the streets of Salisbury. Not being used to going to court, I had made sure that I was relatively smartly dressed so that when I went into the court they didn't throw me out of the building. So I found myself a long way from where I should have been, rain driving into my eyes and wind threatening to blow me into the path of oncoming traffic, suited and booted and trying to stop total strangers to ask for directions.

I noticed than when you stop people in the street to ask for directions to the court, there is an immediate change in their body language. There is a flash of panic across their eyes and you can practically see the speech bubble above their head form and the following thoughts take shape.
'Why does he need to go to court? Is he a criminal? Why else would he be smartly dressed unless he was trying to avoid the consequences of some heinous crime?!'

Without wishing to encourage accusations of paranoia, it did appear that the handful of people I made contact with whilst on my adventure to find the court all reacted negatively towards me. If they had known the full story, that I was headed to court to make final arrangements for a divorce and not to be sentenced for a criminal act, would they have reacted differently? Maybe. But their reactions made me feel like a criminal and I didn't enjoy feeling like an outcast as I finally began to trudge in the right direction towards the court.

The experience has made me acutely aware of the judgements that I make of people based on snippets of information and not the full story. And even then, it's not my job to judge people.

Thinking of this on the train home, I found myself once again astounded at the concept that Jesus encountered some of the most undesirable people in the eyes of the society he was born into. He knew all about their stories, and yet looked beyond all those circumstances and refused to judge them. He didn't treat them like criminals, but as friends. And rather than offering them a short shrift to keep them away, he extended an offer of life.

Not a life defined by how badly you had done or what mistakes you had made up to that point.

But new life.

A new life with him.