Don't judge the contents by the wrapping

My dear friends, don't let public opinion influence how you live out our glorious, Christ-originated faith. If a man enters your church wearing an expensive suit, and a street person wearing rags comes in right after him, and you say to the man in the suit, "Sit here, sir; this is the best seat in the house!" and either ignore the street person or say, "Better sit here in the back row," haven't you segregated God's children and proved that you are judges who can't be trusted? James 2:1-4

I was watching a youtube video of a couple who like to play pranks on each other. In one particularly cruel prank, the girlfriend presents a Christmas gift to her boyfriend. Now he had been hinting to her that he wanted a Nintendo Wii gaming system. When he tore off the gift wrapping paper, lo and behold he was holding a Wii box. Can you imagine his joy as he jumped around, hugged her and celebrated this present? The trick was, the box was filled with college text books. You can figure out how he felt next.

What's interesting is that sometimes we do the same thing with human beings? We assign value to them based on how they look on the outside and how they measure up to our standards.

How many times we judge people's intelligence, character based on what they have on? It is a human struggle. However what we need to do is to continually remind ourselves to see Jesus in everyone. One of my friends says that he tries to treat everyone as a millionaire.

Let's strive to not judge the contents by the wrapping. Recognize the owner of the package and assign value based on Him.