Mislabeled

Last week was my week for mislabels. For dinner one night I wanted to make green chile chicken enchiladas. I grabbed a can of green chile enchilada sauce from my pantry and proceeded to open it up. The sauce inside was the red enchilada sauce, not the green. Good thing I had an extra can.

One day later I bought a new vinyl tablecloth. I removed the old tablecloth from the dining room table, threw it in the trash, and then opened up the new package. It turned out to be a cover for a patio table, which included a handy zipper so you could easily work around your patio umbrella. There was nothing on the label to indicate this at all. I returned the item to the store, but because I needed to pick up the kids from school, I didn't get a chance to look for a new one. I tried another store later, but they didn't have any vinyl covers at all. As of today, I still lack a tablecloth on my table.

With all the quality control our products are supposed to go through, incidents like these aren't meant to happen often. I'm sure the odds of them occuring twice in a row are enormous. There was no way I could tell the items weren't all that they promised to be. Each label was perfect. Nothing from the outside indicated that there was something wrong on the inside.

Sometimes we mislabel people. We assume by their polished exteriors that everything is fine on the inside. Sometimes that's because the person doesn't want to reveal his/her true self to everyone. Other times it's because we don't take the time to see what the inside is really like.

We can't force people to share their troubles with us; but we can ask the Lord to help us pray for the needs of that person, whatever those needs may be. He knows the insides we may never know. He can guide us in the right prayer and the right actions.

Mislabels will unfortunately happen. At least we can lift up people to the Lord so that He can deal with the real inside that we may never see.