My 3 sons and I walked out of a classroom into a hallway, and standing there was an inter-racial couple.  My 11-year-old, who knows nothing about being discreet, was very obviously staring at them.  He then started kinda laughing and pointed them out to us.  “Look,” he said, oh too loudly, “They look so funny together.”  Of course I was horrified.  I knew the couple heard him.  Without really looking at the couple I wanted to usher him away as quickly as possible.  But I wasn’t fast enough.  He started talking to them.  “Oh, no!  Please, God, make him stop!”  I silently prayed.  But he didn’t stop…

“You look so funny together,” my son repeated to them.  Then looking at the man, he said, “I mean you are one of the tallest people I’ve ever seen.”  Then he pointed to the woman, “And you are even shorter than my mom.  It is so funny with you two standing together.”  Then he turned to his brothers, “Do you see how tall that guy is standing with the really short lady?  Doesn’t it look funny?”  The couple laughed.  And I was proud and ashamed at the same time…

When I looked at the couple, they stood out to me because the man was black and the woman was white.  Even though I have friends from all different races, and I don’t believe any race to be superior to any other, and I don’t have a problem with inter-racial marriages – in fact I think God usually blesses those with the most beautiful children ever, I still saw color, and I assumed that was what my son was looking at too.

But when my son looked at them, he didn’t care about the color, he saw height.  And I love that.  I love that seeing an inter-racial couple doesn’t phase him.  I love that when he talked about them in the van on the way home he didn’t say, “that black man” or even “that tall, black man” and “that white woman” or “that short, white woman” it was simply “that tall man and the short woman.”

God, help me, like my son, to be color blind.  May the color of a person’s skin matter no more to me than the color of their eyes or hair.  In fact, help me not to look at the outward appearance, but to look at people’s hearts as you do.  “The LORD does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.” (1 Samuel 16:7)

♥Becki