Reese and I went on a "Daddy-Daughter Date Nite" last night. Her best friend at school told her about Dave & Buster's, a place neither of us had ever been. She said she wanted to go there. Sure. Why not?
The moment we walked in I imagined how they came up with the idea. Two friends named Dave and Buster were sitting in a Chuck E. Cheese after their kids' last soccer game of the season. After a simultaneous eureka, they looked at each other and said, "Let's take this place, make it bigger, lose the disturbing rat, put a bar in the middle of everything, and make the food edible." It may not have happened exactly like that. But I bet I'm close.
So there we were, playing skee-ball, laughing, cheering for each other. Other than the occasional sip of root beer, a permanent smile was glued to Reese's face. She is still talking about it. But the experience would not have been the same for her without me there, and vice versa. We made a memory, and we made it together.
But other than a couple of hours last night, I have been talking and emailing with many of my bloggerland peeps about shame and guilt. I seem to have hit a nerve. Perhaps it is because most of us have been taught to see ourselves as flawed.
Keep in mind that a screwed up church like Corinth, for example, never heard Paul say, "You are bad, worthless people." On the contrary, he wrote, "Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit?" Did they have behaviors, thoughts, and choices that needed to change? Of course. Did those behaviors, thoughts, and choices disqualify them from the presence of God? No.
Take Amos as another example. The farmboy from the south almost 800 years before Corinth went up north to tell Israel the same thing. "You have forgotten how to love one another." But God did not write them off. He wrote them in.
I know some of you are struggling with shame. That notion is of the world. The world points out your flaws. Every woman I know, and many of the men as well, feel judged by airbrushed supermodels on the cover of every magazine. Women, you do not have to look like Katy Perry to be truly beautiful. Men, you do not have to be Superman.
Last night, as we spent our last points on a final game of skee-ball, we took our tickets we won to get a prize. A half-drunk young businessman with a loosened tie was in line just in front of us. They counted his tickets and gave him the grand total. He skipped over to the mini-football helmets, grabbed his beloved maroon keepsake, and walked out with joy in his heart. I looked at Reese, mesmerized by dolls, games, and waffle-irons. (Yeah, I thought that looked a little out of place, too.) She looked beautiful. But it was not her face. It was a smile that radiated from somewhere deep insider her. It was her heart.
And I would like to think that's all God sees when he looks at each one of us as well.
