The Learning Curve: Day 3

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things, there is no law.

   Galatians 5:22

My husband and I are big fans of British murder mysteries. They are a kinder, gentler kind of gruesome death against a backdrop of spring green, cultured voices and a “tea moment.”

A tea moment is not just a general reference to a British beverage, but a real event that often occurs in these shows when the badly shaken eyewitness to the crime is undergoing the initial questioning by the authorities. The interrogation isn’t three questions in when a junior officer appears as if by magic, but probably from the kitchen, with a china cup (not a mug, not a Yeti) of hot tea and delivers it into trembling hands.

There is no truth serum in the tea and the recipient of the hot drink might prove to be the perpetrator, but that is not the point. Rather, the tea moment is a gesture of simple humanity. There is no agenda, no manipulation, just kindness at the most basic level. If there is any learning curve that is worth embracing in this cultural moment, it is this.

We don’t need to be told that our country is at an ugly crossroads. For years Christians have been told that all we needed to do was to hand out the right pamphlet or present a persuasive argument and we would win hearts and minds. Today our country is divided into two camps whose values couldn’t be farther apart.

In the book of Jeremiah we learn of another time when God’s people were called to live in a hostile culture. God, through Jeremiah, gave His people these instructions: 

Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.   Jeremiah 29:5     

We are called to be “children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world,” (Phil. 2:15) -- if only at the level of simple humanity.

Nancy Shirah