Sometimes just sitting still and keeping your ears open in a public place can be more entertaining than a $200 ticket to a Broadway show.
I would have paid good money to listen in on a conversation my husband recently overheard in a Texas airport. Even the retelling by my very non-theatrical husband was worth at least ten bucks.
Now, let me say up front that Joe doesn’t have a nosey bone in his body. He’s never a good source of information about anyone because he knows how to mind his own business. But on this day at the Houston airport, two ladies brought their business so close to my husband that he couldn’t avoid hearing it.
Seems these ladies had a mutual acquaintance who just found out “he” was going to have a baby. Yea, that’s right — the “birthmother” was a man. (Warning: Now might be the time to bail out of this column if you happen to be reading it aloud to your children around the breakfast table.) The ladies were talking quite loud, and as soon as one of them said, “Did you hear HE’s pregnant?,” they snagged the attention of my normally oblivious husband.
Joe said the pair went on to discuss at great length whether their pregnant friend started out life as a “he” or “she,” thereby proving my long-held contention that there are, in fact, folks out there who are even more scientifically “challenged” than I am. Not many perhaps, but some.
After sharing bizarre tidbits from their tiny stashes of biological knowledge, these two ladies couldn’t come to any definite conclusion about their friend’s gender, past or present. The only fact they were certain about was, “Well, I suppose there had to be a man involved somewhere in all this.”
Ya think?
Okay, before anyone scolds me for writing about such an “unspiritual” subject, let me offer this reminder that God’s lessons are too deep and wide and practical to be completely contained within the tidy confines of church buildings. All of life offers an opportunity to see and apply biblical truth, so while some things may be distasteful, nothing is ever really “unspiritual.”
So when Joe told me this tale of gender confusion, I didn’t respond with a rant about the sorry state of morality in our culture, although heaven knows, it crossed my mind. After initially chuckling about the ladies in the airport, my lingering impression was sadness for their confused (and confusing), pregnant friend.
Why sadness? Because it always makes me sad to watch people try to satisfy their thirsty hearts by changing things that don’t really change anything. From wallpaper to spouses to gender identity, we often think “new” will equal “satisfied,” and we can spend a lot of money and spread a lot of pain discovering it doesn’t.
Change obviously isn’t always bad; in fact, sometimes it’s downright wonderful. Like the kind of change Jesus brings into our lives when we place our trust in Him. He makes all things new, beginning in our hearts and ultimately working that newness out through all the layers of our lives.
Why waste time changing things that don’t really change anything? Not when God is reaching out and saying to us, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
No confusion; no delusion. Just Jesus. Real change where it really matters – in the deepest corners of our yearning hearts.