Day Six

Day Six // March 3 // Misunderstandings

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” – Henry David Thoreau –

One morning, Charles Kuralt was driving up a mountain road in Peru when a man appeared suddenly out of the trees by the road. He was wearing a black hood over his face, waving something in his hands and shouting. Kuralt was terrified. He knew that the man must be a gun-wielding bandit. He was trying to decide whether it would be safer to plunge ahead or drive back down the road. The man kept shouting and running toward Kuralt’s car. That settled it. Charles put his car into gear and bolted straight ahead. But the strange man changed his course to intercept him on the road. Charles drove for his life. The man reached the road, removed the hood from his face and waved an object in his hand frantically, just as Kuralt zoomed past him. Then he saw what he was holding. It was a fish. The man had stayed up all night fishing in a nearby lake, had

finally caught something, and was now trying to sell it to a passing motorist. But Kuralt, thinking of mountain bandits, was terrified. Later he wrote these words about the incident: “We met as if by destiny, but one of us was from another world, and wildly misunderstanding.”

How often are we like that? We jump to conclusions. We assume things about others. We are quick to judge without knowing all the facts. This was a constant challenge for the disciples with Jesus. They thought they had Him figured out. They relished His popularity and basked in the power of His miracles. And then, He started talking about the cross. And more than this, He said they must take up their own crosses if they wanted to follow Him, but they could not understand what He was saying. They tried to argue Him out of it. In fact, Matthew tells us that Peter took Jesus aside and said, “God forbid it, Lord! That [the cross] must never happen to you.” But He turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Matthew 16: 22-23).

Peter misunderstood. And I wonder about us? How much of our discord is because we assume we know that which we could never comprehend? We hear what we want to hear and ignore that which is inconvenient. We stereotype and jump to conclusions too quickly… and in so doing, we miss the peace that Christ offers us.